I'll have a pint of cake please

I get a few unusual requests for cakes sometimes, which actually suits me down to the ground as I love flexing my creative muscles to make a cake that is a bit out of the ordinary.  Over the last week I have made two cakes on a tipsy theme - a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a packet of Marlboro Lights for a 40th birthday cake, and a giant pint of Guinness cake which I made for Melissa to celebrate St Patrick's Day on Saturday.

  

 
As I'm writing this post I'm getting hungry again and might just have to cut myself another slice of the Guinness cake before I tell you how I made the cakes....
 
I've made the vodka bottle cake before, so it was quite handy that I already had the label prepared.  Usually I can find a suitable picture on Google Images but in this case I had to make it up from scratch which took more than 2 1/2 hours that I hadn't budgeted for - oops.  Luckily after some good searching I was able to find the Marlboro images I needed, and with a bit of photoshopping I sent the pictures off to be printed into edible images at a local company in Newhaven.  I got some slightly strange looks when I picked them up and had to assure them it wasn't a cigarette flavoured cake!
 
The cake itself is a vanilla madeira cake made from two 5" round cakes that I filled and cut in half to create the main bottle shape:
  

 
Then it just needed a small amount of shaping with a sharp knife to create the domed top and to make sure the sides were smooth and even.  Once carved, the cake was then covered in a thin layer of buttercream:
 

The neck of the bottle was made from a sausage of marzipan, then I covered the whole thing in grey sugarpaste and trimmed neatly:
 

 
The cigarette packed was made from a rectangle of cake cut to just smaller than the image and covered in white sugarpaste.  I've learned the hard way to always use plenty of icing sugar underneath so that when you come to move it to the board the sugarpaste doesn't stick to the surface.
 

 
The surface of the sugarpaste is dampened with a little water before fixing the edible image (see my Monkey Street Art post for top tips on using edible images):
 

 
The bottle label is added to the cake in the same way and the cigarette packet is secured to the board with a little icing.
 

A few finishing touches and a happy birthday message in royal icing and the cake is finished:
 

I think making this cake gave me the inspiration for the Guinness cake, and I instinctively knew that the recipe I had to use was Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cakes, but this one is a little bit different - moist and dark, with a hint of bitterness coming from the Guinness and then lashings of cream cheese icing really makes it a special cake.  Nigella's recipe is for a 9" round cake, which I split between a 5" and a 6" tin to give the basis of the famous pint glass shape.

 
This is quite a damp cake and not really suitable for carving, but I had my heart set on making this cake work and just took shaping the cake very slowly, glueing crumbs back on with a little more icing to fill in any holes.  Usually you can freeze cakes before carving to make it easier, but I didn't want to risk the cream cheese icing in the freezer.   I also stuffed cake crumbs on top of the layers of icing to make as stable a surface as possible for the sugarpaste as the icing isn't as firm or stable as buttercream (so also not really suitable for a carved cake like this!).  Before I started carving I placed strips of greaseproof paper just under the edges of the cake which protect the board from crumbs and smears of icing.  It doesn't look very pretty at this stage, but it's now got just about the right shape:

Then for a thin layer of icing so that the sugarpaste will stick and once that's smooth you can carefully remove the greaseproof paper and you will have a nice clean board underneath:

And then time for the sugarpaste - I like to use Renshaw Chocolate Sugarpaste which has a lovely chocolate flavour.  I covered this up to nearly the top, then covered the top part with white sugarpaste for the head of the pint.  I then cut through both layers of paste and removed the excess to give a nice clean line:

All that was left was to add the logo using some edible gold paint and some superwhite mixed with a dash of water to create the white for the writing.

And it just so happens that this is excellent timing as I am celebrating my blogiversary this week - one year of writing the Brighton Bakery blog.  Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a pint of cake to celebrate with me!

The Cake That Groaned

Usually January is a pretty miserable month - everyone's dieting, cutting down on the booze and the party season has been long forgotten as we all try and figure out how to make it through to the end of the month after overspending at Christmas.

Well last Thursday night defied convention with a cracking launch party for the new graphic novel, The House That Groaned by the super talented Karrie Fransman.  The party was held at the Gallery in Foyle's, the iconic independent bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London and the room was full to bursting.  That Miss Fransman sure does know how to throw a party.  There was a magician, animations, characters from the book were working the room with big papermache cartoon heads, delicious canapes handmade by Karrie's mum and lovingly carried down from Edinburgh in her suitcase, and a room buzzing with fascinating people.  I was thrilled to have been asked to contribute to the festivities by baking a cake in the shape of the house itself.

Here's how it turned out:

Photo (c) Sabrina Dallot-Seguro

I was really excited that while Karrie was busy signing books, for once I actually got to cut the cake!

Photo (c) Susan Yan Mach

Although it could never compete with the multilayered, twisted adult fairytale that is The House That Groaned, I would like to share with you the story of The Cake That Groaned.

One windy afternoon, two days before the party, a couple of chubby packs of butter made friends with some golden caster sugar, a few eggs, some real vanilla and a cloud of flour.  Once they had thouroughly gotten to know each other in the bowl of a shiny red Kitchenaid, through the magic of bakery these ingredients gently rose in the warm oven of a basement kitchen in Brighton and a delicious 10" vanilla madeira cake was born.

As with all my cakes, I left it well wrapped overnight to settle, and the next day I split it into 3 even layers ready for filling.  The book itself uses different tones of blue throughout, so I thought the perfect choice would be a wild blueberry jam for the filling, which complemented very nicely with the real vanilla cake and Italian meringue buttercream.

I cut a two inch section from the side of the cake and fixed it to the top of the cake with a smear of buttercream, trimming at an angle to create the shape of the roof.  I then gave the whole cake a thin covering of buttercream and covered it with blue sugarpaste:

I then had some fun with my new brick texturing tool to create the brickwork pattern over the top and sides:

 

Next up I created the texture of the roof slates using the end of a piping nozzle.  I also added the chimneys, secured in place with a short length of dried spaghetti and some edible glue:

For the windows I had cut out rectangles of yellow modelling paste and left them to dry out before drawing on the room scenes with edible pen.  Once the ink was dry, I fixed them to the cake using some edible glue.

Karrie - if you're reading, don't look too closely at the drawings, I am definitely not an artist!  As with all my cakes, it's about capturing the essence of the object I am recreating, not an exact depiction...

I finished off the cake by adding the window frames and doors and it was ready to travel 50 odd miles up to London to the party.

Here it is, next to the book itself:

And I'm pleased to say that I had some great feedback on the cake.  Most of it had gone within about 20 minutes so that's got to be a good sign.

If you've not bought the book yet I can highly recommend it.  It's a cracking read, exploring the themes of body image and desire through the larger than life characters that live in a crumbling down house.  Take a look at the book's website www.thehousethatgroaned.com to meet the characters and order your copy. 

Enjoy xx

A quirky character cake for Sheena

Sometimes Melissa and I can be a bit rubbish at remembering things, especially important dates like friends' birthdays.  No matter how many times we mention it and remind ourselves in the weeks before the event, the date will fly right past us until that forehead-smacking moment when we realise it's too late.

So when it's a really good friend's birthday that escapes us (sorry again Sheena!), we usually make up for it by making an extra nice cake. 

I had borrowed this great book in the library called Fun and Original Character Cakes and I had been waiting for an excuse to make this really cute cake that appears on the front of it.  Sheena and her husband Nathan have just had a beautiful baby boy called Murphy, so we thought that Sheena deserved a little pampering in return for the sleepless nights she's been having with the little one.  This cake seemed to fit the bill.

The cake was a beetroot and chocolate loaf cake which I based on a Diana Henry recipe.  I was a bit worried about how the cake would turn out as we had a power surge that blew the fuse for the cooker right in the middle of baking it.  Luckily we replaced the fuse quickly and it didn't make any difference to the final result.

The book gives step by step instructions for making all the decorations.  I made a few tweaks to the design, mainly making it into an old fashioned roll top bath shape on a chequered floor.  The original design has a round bath which is covered with black sugarpaste, but I try not to use black very much as it has so much colouring added it doesn't taste very nice.

About half way through making the cake, Melissa and I had a little panic that Sheena might be offended by giving her a cake with a hippo on it.  At this stage I'd already spent hours making it and they were due to arrive soon so there wasn't really time to change plans.  I just had to hope that it would be cute enough and she would appreciate the effort we had gone to.  And the main thing that matters is the taste right?

Luckily Sheena loved it, and really liked how long Miss Hippo's eyelashes were.  She took the cake to her family gathering the next day and they all gave really great feedback.  What was interesting was that the cake actually got more chocolatey and moist the following day -  I think that might be because of the beetroot.

There are some other quirky cake designs in the book that I really want to make.  I guess I'll just have to wait to miss another friend's birthday to try one out ;o)

Mixing Desk Cake: The Making Of...

I've had such great feedback about the Mixing Desk Cake I made for my friend Dan that I thought I would share with you how I made it. For those that don't want to spoil the magic, look away now!

PS this is a longer post than normal so I recommend reading with a piece of cake and a cuppa :o)

Making The Cake

Dan's party was on Saturday night, so I began making the cake on the Thursday. I didn't have a cake tin big enough, so Melissa and I hopped in the car down to Chatawak, the lovely cake supplies shop in Peacehaven, where you can rent a 12" cake tin for a mere £1.50 per day. I've never made such a large cake before so I wanted to double check with the very helpful owner there as I'd also not tried the recipe before. I was starting to feeling a bit nervous at my inexperience before I'd even started, but I was still up for the challenge). My Home Guide To Cake Decorating has a madeira cake recipe for all cake sizes but for some reason the larger the cake, the smaller the proportion of eggs in the recipe. Also the proportions of self-raising flour and plain flour seemed to be the wrong way round so I asked Sue's advice. She checked against her recipes and said the amount of eggs seemed right but agreed there seemed to be a mistake with the flour and suggested I tried a small test cake swapping the quantities over.

So with added trepidation about the task ahead I went home and cooked a test cake with the tweaked flour quantities. This seemed to work well, but the cake was a little airier that I needed so I upped the proportion of plain flour against the self-raising flour when making the final mixture. I also added the zest of 5 lemons and substituted the milk for lemon juice for extra flavour (in hindsight when I tasted the cake the zest of 8 lemons would have been even zingier). And just to highlight how unprepared I was I didn't even have a mixing bowl big enough, so I mixed the cake in my large Le Crueset casserole pot instead!

When baking the cake I didn't want to take any chances, so I took extra care and double lined the tin with baking parchment and also wrapped the outside of the tin with a few layers of newspaper. To help the cake rise evenly I created a well in the middle of the mix - a tip I learned at pastry school.
As I put the cake in the oven I crossed my fingers, said a prayer to the cake god and hoped for the best. Just over 2 hours later, I was rewarded with a beautiful looking cake:

Cake just out of the oven

Scary moment number 1 - overcome!

I left the cake to cool in the tin on a wire rack, but while it was still warm I spiked it all over with a skewer and drizzled over a simple lemon syrup. I reserved a bit of the syrup to add between the layers. The cake was then left to settle overnight (wrapped and left in a cool dry place), which makes it easier to level and cut the layers the next day.

Cutting and Icing The Cake

Scary moment #2 was getting the cake out of the tin without it breaking. For this I decided to place the wire rack covered with baking paper on the top and flip it over. I then had to turn it the right way up again onto a large baking tray covered with foil. This procedure came with the added sound effects of Melissa screeching "Oh my god let me help you!" and similar panicked sounds but they seemed to help as it turned out without any problems.

Luckily the cake had risen pretty evenly so there wasn't much of a dome to level off (I think the well in the middle out really helped). I tried my cake leveller but with such a large cake it was about as much use as a chocolate teapot so I got out my big serrated knife instead which was much better:

Levelling the cake

I then needed to turn it upside down again so that the smoothest edge was on the top. I decided to put it straight onto the final board at this stage, secured with a good smearing of buttercream in the middle. I added strips of baking parchment around the sides of the cake to protect the board from being marked.

Time for scary moment #3 - cutting the layers. I really wanted to cut the cake into 3 layers but this was quite risky with this size of cake. Having gotten so far without anything going wrong I wimped out and just went for 2 layers. I scored around the edges to make sure it was even, then cut through with my serrated knife, working towards the middle.  

Cutting the layers

I got Melissa to cross her fingers for scary moment #4 - lifting the top layer off onto baking parchment. The trick is to be confident, and with the luck of the Irish I managed to get the layer off fine.
I brushed the exposed layer with the reserved lemon syrup for extra flavour and moistness, then smoothed on lemon curd buttercream:

Adding buttercream

Scary moment #5 - lifting the top layer back on and into position. I was on a roll with pushing through the nerve barriers on my last 4 scary moments, but if the top layer went on wonky it would have been difficult to fix so I really wanted to get this right. Luckily it magically (or should I say skilfully) sat down exactly square on top of the bottom layer.

Adding the top layer of cake

At this stage I was thankful I'd only done 2 layers insted of 3!

I then covered the outside of the cake with a thin layer of lemon curd buttercream and tried to make it as smooth as possible. 

Adding buttercream to top & sides of cake

Once the cake was fully iced with the buttercream I left it to the side and coloured the sugarpaste. I used White Renshaw Regalice sugarpaste and added Sugarflair liquorice colouring.

Coloured sugarpaste

I then rolled out the sugarpaste ready for covering the cake using plenty of icing sugar to stop it sticking. I also used the smoother over the paste while it was still on the board. What I hadn't taken into consideration though, was that the paste would end up being longer than my rolling pin (and my pin is pretty long) so this made my final scary moment #6 ever more nervewracking. I called Melissa for some moral support and we both held our breath as I folded the paste over the rolling pin and lifted it onto the cake. Luckily it went on and didn't leave any marks on the side from the pin:

Cake covered with sugarpaste

I then used smoothers over the top and sides of the cake and trimmed away the excess. I worked a little more at the edges to create a sharper line.

Smoothing the sugarpaste

To make the cake look more realistic as a mixing desk I brushed on some metallic lustre dust (I used Metallic Light Silver from The Edible Silk Range by Rainbow Dust).

Brushing on silver lustre

I then left the cake overnight for the sugarpaste to dry out before adding the buttons the next day.

Making The Decorations

Time for the fun bit!

Using the excess grey sugarpaste leftover from icing the cake, I worked in a little gum tragacanth to add strength. I created one knob to use as a template, and when I was happy with the size I rolled out sausages of paste and cut them evenly, using the template as a guide.

Cutting the mixing desk knobs

I then used the back of a paring knife to create the ridges down the side:

Creating the ridges

Then repeated the process over and over until I had enough. I needed 38 but made a few extra just in case there were any casulaties :o)  
I also created the sliders using black sugarpaste, again rolling a sausage and cutting even pieces, then shaping using the little knife again. I made 7 in black and 4 in grey, plus one black knob using the same method as before.

Shaping sliders

I rolled out more black sugarpaste for the small black buttons and the black plugs for the top plus a rectangle for the LED display. For the black buttons I simply cut 4 thin horizontal strips and cut again vertically to make 32. For the 6 black plugs I cut the paste using a large piping nozzle and marked the inner circle with a smaller nozzle and added 3 dots to each. I made the red and white component cables by securing liquorice inside red and white tapered sausage shapes and marking small lines with a paring knife at the top.

Finally I made 12 small grey jack plugs and 4 slightly larger grey plugs (to fit the red and white component cables) which I painted using the silver lustre mixed with a little gin (mmm - any excuse). Unfortunately I don't have a picture but here they all are on the finished cake:

Elements for top of cake

I then poured myself a well earned glass of wine as all the sugarpaste decorations needed to be left overnight to firm up.

Decorating The Cake

This was the morning of the party and said another prayer to the cake god as there was no time left to bake another one now.

I made up a batch of royal icing and several piping cornets out of silicone paper. I always forget how long it takes to do royal icing, especially when you need several different colours (I used white, red, blue, black, grey and green).

I piped the colours on to the top of the knobs (8 white, 12 red, 12 blue and 6 black) and left to dry before adding a thin line of grey on top to make the dial. The sliders all had a white line piped down the middle. Two of the four component plugs needed royal icing in the centre (1 red 1 white). I also piped the LED display with a grey bar and a red number 40 (as it's Dan's 40th birthday).

Then for the most exciting bit of the whole cake - adding all the decorations and making it come to life!

I used grey royal icing to secure all the elements (that way if any did show underneath it wouldn't be too noticeable). I started at the top with the plugs and then used a pen with edible ink to draw on the model number box. I had based this on Dan's actual mixing desk so I kept the same brand name, but made up the model number to be personalised for him.

Edible ink pen - my new toy

I then worked across from the left, spacing things as I went before securing with royal icing so that I didn't go wonky. I scored lines with a knife and added the text before sticking down the sliders.

Assembling the final elements

Adding the knobs

Once all the elements were stuck down with royal icing, all that was left was to pipe the red, green and one black dots to the right of the cake and I was done. 

Time to stand back and admire my handiwork:

Final Mixing Desk Cake

Mixing desk - profile

I nearly forgot scary moment #7 - transporting the cake over 70 miles by taxi, train, bus and foot to the party in Soho without it getting damaged.   Next time I would really only ever deliver by car - taking it on a London bus can be treacherous but walking about a mile with a cake that is much heavier than you would think in a 16" box is no mean feat.

And scary moment #8 - was Dan going to like it?

Well this was really the best moment of all - he loved it.  It went down really well and everyone in the room was watching as I carried it in. Plus it tasted good - what more could I have asked for?  All in all I was really pleased it had all gone so well.

Bring on the next one!

Dan's Mixing Desk Cake - my first commission

A couple of months ago my good friend Chris asked if she could commission a cake for her husband Dan's 40th birthday.  I was thrilled to be asked and naturally jumped at the challenge.  Initially Chris suggested a guitar cake, but when I thought it over I wasn't sure if would be able to make a guitar that would look realistic and not like a children's cake.  So I put my brain to work to see if I could come up with an idea that would both be impressive as a novelty cake plus something that I could realistically pull off and make to a high standard.  Continuing along the musical theme and knowing that Dan loves to mix his own music in his attic studio at home I thought a mixing desk cake would be perfect. 

Luckily Chris agreed and was able to secretly send me some photos of his mixing desk for me to base my design on.  Full details of how I made the cake will follow in another blog, but I was so pleased with how it turned out I thought I would give you a sneak preview of the final cake:

Mixing Desk Cake



And I am thrilled to report that Dan was really pleased with the cake and everyone at the party enjoyed it.  I even had 3 people come up to me and say that it was the best cake they have ever seen, so that was a really lovely compliment and a much needed confidence boost.  Can't wait to bake the next one now :o)

Watch this space for Mixing Desk: The making of...