My Birthday Cake

For my birthday cake this year, yes I made my own birthday cake, I decided to make my first royal iced cake. This was a whole new challenge to me as I've only recently been introduced to royal icing to be piped let alone to cover the whole cake. However, I had a marzipaned fruit cake and decided to give it a shot. 

I made up a batch of royal icing, breaking my mixer in the process, using meriwhite, icing sugar and water. The first batch of icing was too stiff and not whisked enough, I learnt this in later attempts, so it didn't stick or smooth particularly well. I used this as the first layer and smoothed it all down. After putting on several layers and managing to get better layers of icing, I decided the cake was as smooth as it was going to get. I've learn a lot just from this one cake so I would hope that my next cake will be loads better. I've learnt more about the consistency of the icing, what it should be and I've also learnt that royal iced cakes can not be rushed and require lots of drying time. It took 3 days to cover this cake. 

This type of cake will be a good blank canvas for my future sugar flowers, I can't wait to start my PME diploma in April, but for now I had to make do with my small skills. I made a couple of roses, using different size cutters so that I had different rose sizes. I was mostly happy with my roses but I really want these to improve and expect to get many more hints and tips after my course. Watch this space!! 

Rose Cake

I also used a cutter and imprinter to produce some smaller flowers to create some contrast and colour for the cake. 

Flowers down the side of the cake.

Overall I was reasonable happy with the cake. As I said I've learnt a lot from this cake and would love the opportunity to make another one in a few months. The layers of icing were quite even and the cake tasted really good, even my sister ate it (she doesn't like cake!). 

Sliced Cake. 

Bucky Ship

For my nephew's birthday cake I was asked to make Bucky from Jake and the Neverland. I had never heard of this ship but pictures were easily available from the internet so I copied the ship from these. 

Using my standard rich chocolate cake recipe I made 2 large rectangle cakes. With the first cake I cut out the shape of the ship. With the second I cut it into smaller sections, 2 were used to raise up the back of the ship and 1 for the shaping on the front of the cake. It was all stuck together with chocolate butter icing. 

The whole cake was covered in butter icing. I then covered the outside edge in darker brown sugar paste with the top covered in lighter brown icing. The cake was edged in yellow icing. I used smaller sausages to place rings around the whole of this yellow trim, they were placed at a carefully measured distances. 

To create the mast I covered a wooden skewer in brown icing and left to dry. I used spaghetti to support the across strips covered in icing. I tied these on with thread. I printed the blue and white strips on some paper and then stuck these onto the strips with tape. 

To create the slide I shaped some icing over a rolling pin, left it to harden and the stuck it on the cake. The railings were created by placing icing on cocktail sticks. I then stick a railing on top of these. The final details on the cake were created with sugar paste. 

To create the sea I coloured some butter icing with blue but didn't stir it in completely to create a slightly marbled effect. I then spread this over the board and shaped away from the cake to create the sense of waves. 

Finished cake

Side View

To complete the cake some character candles were added. 

Character candles

Pirate Candles

This cake was a real challenge to transport, if I was to make it again I wouldn't put the mast in until the cake was finished and would have finished off the bird's nest better. Overall I was quite pleased with how the cake turned out but as usual I think it could have been much better. I hope that the birthday boy, and his parents, liked the cake. 

Lime Cupcakes

I was asked to create some sample cupcakes this weekend, one of the flavours was lime, so I set about thinking what the best way to put this in was. I decided to try a few different methods and leave it to the couple to decide which their favourite was. 

For all the cupcakes I made a lime basic cupcake:

300g Butter

300g Caster Sugar

300g Self raising flour

6 Eggs

I baked these at 180oC for around 30 minutes and then left to cool. 

Cooling cupcakes

While they were cooling I made a lemon and lime curd for the centre of the cakes. 

Zest and Juice of 2 limes

Zest and Juice of 3 lemons

250g Caster Sugar

125g Butter

4 Eggs

Combine the zest, juice, sugar and butter in a bowl over gently simmering water. Stir until the sugar and butter have melted. 

Lightly whisk the eggs and then add to the mixture. Continue stirring until the mixture has started to thicken and is coating the back of the spoon. Set aside and leave to cool, as it cools it'll thicken even further. 

Lemon and lime curd

I cut the tops of the cupcakes off, so they were level, and a small disc in the centre. I filled this with some of the curd. 

The topping is where the cakes differed. I decided to try two varieties of meringue and one with butter cream. 

Firstly I made a soft merringue. I combined 1 egg white with 50g Caster Sugar in a bowl over simmering water. I whisked this until the sugar had dissolved. Took it off the heat and whisked until the mixture was forming soft peaks. This was then piped onto the prepared cupcakes. 

Secondly I made a baked meringue topping. 1 egg white was combined with 50g Caster sugar and whisked until forming soft peaks. This was piped onto the cakes and then placed under a hot grill until the top was golden. 

Finally I made Italian meringue buttercream and stirred in some lime curd, from above. I piped this onto the cakes. 

Baked and soft meringue lime cupcakes

I used little coloured sugar paste shapes to distinguish between the cakes and have sent them off to Wales for the testing. The verdict from this kitchen is the baked meringue is the favourite but we shall see which they prefer. 

Flower Chain Cake

I wanted to make a birthday cake for my mother in law. After looking through the latest edition of the cake decoration magazine I got the idea to make a butterfly and flower chain cake. I decided to make 2 raspberry cakes with raspberry italian merringue buttercream icing. I made an 8 inch cake and a 6 inch cake:

Ready to go in the oven

Ingredients:

350g Butter

350g Caster Sugar

350g Self Raising flower

6 Eggs

100g Raspberries

Beautifully baked and cooling

Once the cakes were baked I cut them in half and filled the centre with the buttercream. I then coated the cakes in the buttercream and left it to harden slightly. 

Once ready I covered the cakes in white sugar paste, placed on thin cards and then placed on top of each other. 

Using royal icing I piped a snail trail around the edge of each cake to cover up the join. 

Using petal paste I coloured to pale pink, darker pink and purple. I then used some flower cutters and made 225 flowers in total. These were all rolled on a foam mat and left to dry. I also made 18 butterflies, folded these and left them to dry in shape. 

225 Flowers

Once everything is ready I marked chains around the outside of the cake and stuck the flowers on in random patterns along the line using royal icing. I also piped a dot in the centre of each flower. I stuck the butterflies in each gap and then pushed the wires in the centre of the top cake. Using a few more flowers the wire entry is covered up and a centre piece is created. 

Finished Cake

The top

Side View

Side view

Overall I was happy with this cake and it looks lovely. It's not perfect and is a little lopsided, however, if I was to make this again it would certainly be better and the basic idea is very good. 

If you're looking for a cake for any occasion please get in touch. I can make cakes to your budget and am currently making them for just the price of the ingredients (February 2014) but this will only be for a few more month. 

Formula 1 Cake

For Gary's second birthday cake, he wanted a mercedes formula 1 cake. Since it was a much more difficult shape I decided to go with a fairly simple flavour, lemon. I made a lemon sponge and covered this in lemon Italian merringue buttercream. 

I found a picture of a F1 car on the internet, made this the size of the cake and then used this as a template to cut out the cake. I then cut another level in order to create the seat shaping. 

Cut sponge

I covered in the buttercream and the covered this in silver sugar paste. Using a round cutter I cut out some wheels and covered these in black sugar paste. 

Close up of the car with the wing

I made a front wing out of flower paste, which is stronger than standard sugar paste and hardens over night. I also made a back wing but after 3 attempts at these I decided to leave it off because they kept breaking and I'd run out of time. I also attempted to paint the advertising onto the cake but again I had to leave it partly due to time and partly due to skill. 

I was fairly happy with the cake but it wasn't as good as I hoped. I would have liked more time and skill to make it better but it was clear what it was meant to be so that's a good start. 

Finished cake with a wing (which later broke!)

Cricket Cake

As you may, or may not, know it's Gary's birthday today and I decided to make him 2 cakes. Lucky boy!! I wanted to make a simple cake that focused more on flavours and a more complex cake, which will be posted later.

The simple cake was to be decorated with a few cricket pieces but I was going to try some new techniques. First was the sponge it's self. He wanted raspberry and white chocolate flavours so the tricky thing was to get these flavours to balance. White chocolate is quite a subtle flavour and I was afraid it'd be dominated by the raspberry. I made a vanilla sponge and then stirred in 200g of chopped white chocolate. I then added some raspberries and stirred these in carefully to try and maintain their shape and structure.

For the icing I made Italian merringue butter cream. I will post how to make this at a later date, and stirred in some homemade raspberry curd, again will post about this later. I filled the cake with icing and also gave it a coating in the raspberry icing. 

I then made a white chocolate ganache by heating some double cream and adding white chocolate to melt in. Ideally I would have done a 4:1 ratio of chocolate to cream but I didn't have enough chocolate so I used a 2.5:1 ratio. This seemed to work fine and I had a thick chocolate mixture. I spread this over the cake and left it to set. I then covered this is green sugar paste and smoothed it, creating a crisp edge. 

I made a bat, ball and stumps out of sugar paste and stuck these on the top. 

Finished cake

Overall the cake looked ok, it was very simple. I could have put more details on the cake if I'd had some more tools, which I don't, but it was ok. The icing was too thick and so towards the edges the balance wasn't right. However, if you had a slice from the middle it was much better. 

Internal view

Navy Roses with Polka Dots

I've been really busy lately trying to get various systems online but I decided to take a break from it all and decorate a cake. I didn't have an occasion to make it for so I decided to us my cake dummy instead. The challenges with this were to:

1) get the light weight cake to stick to the board - solved with some toothpicks. 

2) Getting the icing to stick to the dummy. 

I decided to cover the cake in ivory icing, along with the board, in the usual manner. I have been practicing making roses using various tutorials and finally I produced 3 that I was reasonably happy with. I used these as the centre piece for the cake, 3 roses slightly lifted balancing on each other and made a few green leaves to fill in the gaps. For the rim of the cake I decided to try and create a polka dot pattern. I used a template, produced in Word, and dented the icing with a skewer. I then watered down some of the ivory icing and piped this into the dents. 

Overall I was liked the design of the cake and think it looks stylish, maybe for a wedding or older person's birthday. I need to neaten up my polka dots and next time will be using royal icing instead. I find this a much better consistency to pipe with. I like the roses on the top but will continue to practice making these to get them even better. 

Roses on the cake

Finished design.

I will try making some other dummy cakes so I can practice some more and also it'll increase my portfolio. I hope that my new website will go live very soon. I am also going determined to significantly improve my standard this year so that I'm reasonably happy with every cake. It'll only go into my portfolio if I think it's good enough. 

If you'd like a cake, for any occasion, made to order, please get in contact with me. I'm currently, January 2014, making cakes for just the cost of ingredients and am really looking to increase my portfolio with some stunning designs.

Range Cooker

To start off the New Year I was asked to make a cake in the shape of my new range cooker. I haven't physically got it in the kitchen yet so this was done from photographs. 

I was asked to make a chocolate cake so I used my rich chocolate cake recipe and halved it. I made a square cake and then cut it in two and placed them on top of each other to make a rectangle. 

Two rectangles

I then covered this in orange butter icing and some navy blue sugar paste. I made the navy blue sugar paste by combining blue and black paste. Using a smoother I made sure the edges were sharp. 

Covered and ready for detailing. 

Then using sugar paste I cut out some rectangles for the front making the oven door detailing. I used black to create the glass front effect and silver to make the handles. These are just sausage shapes stuck on the front. 

I created a rim on the top of the cake with navy blue and then one down the centre of the cake. I also created a strip along the front which I put all the knobs on. I made these out of small balls which I then shaped with a knife to create little handles. 

Using black I create the timer screen and the gas hob centres. I also used a series of sausages to create the shaping on the top. 

Top

Front

Overall the result was better than I expected 1 day ago. I would have liked to create a much cleaner finish and also a taller cake so it is more in proportion. It's a bit short and fat. I'm very happy with the detailing on the top though. 

If I was to make this cake again I would do the oven doors differently so I got a cleaner finish, maybe make it as one piece so I could make it flat. 

If you are in need of a cake for any occasion please get in touch. I'm currently doing it for just the cost of ingredients (January 2014) while I build up my portfolio. We can discuss the design you'd like and work from that. 

Happy New Year 2014

Well it's the first day of 2014 and I've started it as I mean to go on.. with a cake in the oven. I'll write a blog post about this particular cake later but for now I'm going to leave you in suspense as to the design. It's quite an appropriate start to the year though. 

So while I'm waiting for it to cook I thought I'd write a little post about the coming year and what I hope to achieve. 

I guess one of the biggest things which will happen is us moving house. I hope that this will happen at some point in February but who knows?! We are really looking forward to moving, partly because we'll be in our own house for the first time and we are planning this is a house for life. Secondly because we'll be moving to the village of Ringmer, meaning we're closer to Gary's family. I'm looking forward to being able to get out and about a bit easier, visiting the children's groups and hopefully making some contacts. 

Linked to this I hope that 2014 will be the year that we get our new kitchen. The house we're hoping to buy has only got a small kitchen so once we're in the plan is to convert the garage. I would love to be able to afford an extension on the back too, linking the kitchen to the utility room, but I don't think we'll be able to afford both so for now it'll be a trip through the back garden to join them. I will, however, have a half my kitchen and it'll be a good start. With the new kitchen will come the other big thing of the year..

Once the kitchen is finished I hope to register it so that I can officially become a business. I will need to register it with the food hygiene people so that I can safely sell my cakes and I'll be back in the world of self employment again. I'm not expecting the business to ever get to the stage where it supports us but a little extra income would be very useful indeed. I hope the business will take off but this depends very much on the likes of you... 

I have started creating a new website and I hope that we can get this ready in the next few months, along with getting some business cards printing and smartening up my portfolio. 

In the coming year I hope to further improve my skills. I'll finish my current course in March, on my birthday to be precise, and then I hope to start another one in September. This is much more costly but will, eventually, give me 3 diplomas and a masters in sugar craft. I hope that this will really help advance my skills and take my cakes up another level. Of course I'll continue to practice myself and improve on a cake to cake basis. 

I hope that I can keep my diary full with cakes, at the moment I've been fortunate enough to have a few people ordering cakes from me. I really want word to spread a little further so I can get a decent contact basis together. I understand that my cakes can't be a day to day order but the more people that are aware of me the better, so please spread the word. 

I hope that my facebook presence can improve in the next year and I would like to get to a modest 100 likes. I have a long way to go yet but I will continue plugging away at it. Even if you aren't local I still want you to "like" the page. It looks much better to have 100 likes than 30, also if you like then a friend might see and then a friend.. onwards and onwards and I'll gradually get seen by the right people. 

On a personal level 2014 is the year my little sister is getting married :). The year that Gary gets a promotion and gets a massive payrise (I'm dreaming!!) and the year my niece/nephew will be born. I'm sure there's lots more that is happening this year, like me losing a huge chunk of weight, but we shall just have to wait and see what happens through this time. 

Have a good year all :). 

Happy New Year from Mini Manley

Rose Garden Cake

I was asked to make a 60th birthday cake this week. The design we decided on was a rose garden cake and a vanilla sponge cake, jam filling. 

My first job was to make the cake, for this I used Mary Berry's recipe found here. It worked well and I was happy with the finished product. I filled the cake with some good quality raspberry jam and placed it on an iced cake board. 

Victoria Sponge

I covered the cake in a layer of butter icing in preparation for the decorations. 

Butter iced and ready to go. 

To make the rose bushes I first of all focused on making the flowers. Having never made these before I looked it up in a book to get a bit of an idea. It was made more difficult because the flowers were so tiny but I managed to make a range of flowers in varieties of pinks and purples. 

Little Roses

With these flowers I made some bushes by wrapping them in brown icing and then sticking leaves on top of this to create a bush effect. It might not be typically rose bush like but I think it's close enough to look effective. 

I made some paving slabs and a plaque out of icing and harden it with gum and then I set about designing the cake. I placed everything on the cake to get an idea of design. 

Placing on the cake to design

I wanted to make the borders out of biscuits and I was asked to make coconut grass so this was my next challenge. I used chocolate digestives and crushed these. Making sausages out of brown icing I marked out the borders and then carefully filled this in with the biscuits. 

Biscuit borders

I coloured some coconut green and carefully placed this in all the gaps and around the edge of the cake. It was difficult to get it to stick to the icing but I managed to get enough on the cake to get some coverage. 

Coconut Grass

I then stuck everything onto the cake. 

All stuck together

Unfortunately the pink plaque broke so I made another one out of white and carefully piped the lettering on to this. I then placed it on the cake and it was finished. 

Finished Cake Top

Side view

Top View

Unfortunately this plaque also broke in transit so I had to make another one. I wasn't as happy with the final one as the previous one but I hope it was ok.

New plaques!!

Overall I was really happy with the cake and I don't think, at this stage, I could have done any better. I've learnt a lot from creating this cake and I hope that the birthday lady and my "client" were also happy. 

If you have an event you'd like a cake for please get in touch. We can discuss a design to suit and at present (November 2013) I'm creating cakes for the cost of the ingredients. 

Galaxy Bar

I was asked to make a chocolate cake in the shape of a galaxy chocolate bar. I used my standard chocolate cake recipe:

325g Butter

325g Plain Chocolate

50ml Coffee

2tsp Vanilla Essence

325g Plain Flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate

475g Light soft brown sugar

5eggs

284ml Soured Cream

Melt the chocolate and butter together. Add this to the other ingredients and stir it all until the mixture is smooth and mixed together. Pour into a lined cake tin and cooked until the skewer comes out clean. Once the cake was cooled I covered it in chocolate butter icing and chilled in the fridge. 

Smooth butter icing

I had ordered some good quality icing for this cake but unfortunately it hadn't arrived so I had to use the cheaper stuff. I coloured it brown, using a lot of brown paste, and covered the cake in 1 layer. 

Covered cake

I coloured the brown slightly darker, placed a thin layer of white and then the darker brown on top. 

Ready for detailing

Using various shades of brown I cut out the shaping for the bar wrapping. I used the lettering from the wrapper to create the words and finally made a square of chocolate for the top. Using a knife I marked out a few squares of chocolate on the edge of the bar. 

Finished Galaxy Cake

I was pleased with the over all effect of the bar. It would have been better with stronger icing but it still came out very well. I hope the birthday girl liked it. 

If you have any need for a cake please get in touch, for a few more months I'll be making cakes for just the cost of the ingredients (November 2013).