Gary's Tiger Lily Cake

For my husband's birthday this year he gave me the brief of making him an impressive cake with flowers. His favourite of those I've made so far is the Tiger Lily. So of course I used these on his cake. I decided to make a 2 tiered square cake in white decorated with piped detailing. 

My first job was to make the lilies. I made several so I could cover the cake with them. 

Tiger Lilies

Gary asked for a chocolate cake and a lemon cake, so I made these, filled them and covered them in sugarpaste and left them to settle a little. 

Covered cake and placing lilies

For the piping detailing I found a design we liked on the internet and traced this on to the cake. I them piped over these. I wasn't 100% happy with the piping but it wasn't bad for a first attempt in this style. I'll continue to practice. 

Once the cake was all dried I placed ribbons around each tier and put the lilies on the cake. 

Finished Cake

I was really pleased with the effect of this cake and thought the lilies looked stunning. I got lots of lovely compliments and will certainly be adding it to my wedding portfolio. 

Close up of side lily

Close up of top liliess

Teddy Bears Picnic Cake

For my dad's birthday this year I decided to use my recently learnt modelling skills. I made him a teddy bears picnic scene with a grandad, grandma and Amelia. Mum, who ordered the cake, asked that I made a light fruit cake so I made an 8" cake and covered this in marzipan and sugar paste. 

I edged the cake with "grass" which I cut out of sugar paste and stuck around the outside in a 3d effect. I made a rug and also draped over the top of the cake in a 3d effect. On top of this rug I carefully modelled the bears and stuck them down. I needed them to have some food to eat so I made a chocolate cake, bread and some carrot sticks, in an attempt to be healthy!! Each bear was eating a different piece of food with grandad eating the cake of course. 

Picnic Food

The final step to the cake was to place flowers around the cake, they were placed side and top. These were simple blossoms that were cut out using a plunger. 

Teddy bears in the field

Final Cake

Overall I was happy with this cake and my dad thought it was lovely which is all that mattered. It was nice to have a different cake in my portfolio. 

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!)

Diet Coke Can Chocolate Cake

I received an order for this cake as someone's birthday was approaching. The brief was to create a chocolate cake in the shape and design of a diet coke can. This is probably the strangest request I've had so far but I set about doing my research. First job.. send Gary down to the Co Op to buy me a can of diet coke to use as my guide!!

I decided that in order to create the tall cylinder I needed to bake 3 cakes in the smallest tin I had, this was a 6" tin. I had to work out the quantities from previous cakes and here is the list I came up with, this was slightly too much mixture for the 3 cakes but I preferred having a little left over as back up so I would stick with this quantity in the future.

Ingredients:

500g Plain chocolate

500g Unsalted Butter

500g Plain Flour

75ml Coffee

2tsp Vanilla Essence

1tsp Baking Powder

1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

715g Light Brown Sugar

8 Eggs

426ml Soured Cream

Method:

Melt together the chocolate and the butter over a low heat. Add the vanilla essence and coffee and leave to cool slightly.

Mix together the soured cream and eggs.

Place the flour, sugar, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl. Make sure there are no lumps in the sugar.

Add the chocolate mixture to the flour along with the egg mixture. Stir it all together until fully combined.

Spoon some of the mixture into a greased 6" tin until around 3/4 full. Place in the oven, 150oC, for 1hour30 minutes. The top of the cake should feel firm to touch and spring back slightly. If there is no resistence when pressing the cake needs slightly longer in the oven.

Leave to cool in the tin for several hours. Run a knife around the outside and  carefully remove.

Bake the remaining 2 cakes in the same way.

Once the cakes had cooled I made some chocolate buttercream and stacked the cakes up on top of each other. 

Stacked cakes

I then covered the cake in chocolate buttercream around the outside as well. I added a tiny amount of black colouring to some white icing to make it a very slight grey colour. This was the closest I could get to silver. I covered the whole cake with this icing. This step was challenging due to the size of the cake, when I tried to attached the icing it kept ripping and falling apart. In the end I had to do it in several sections and try and rub them together. It didn't create a great base for the cake and this is probably the thing that let it down the most. 

I printed off some logos from the internet and cut these out as templates for the lettering. 

Paper templates

Using red and black icing I cut out the letters and stuck them on the side of the cake. I also cut a white strip and place this up the side as well. 

Coke Lettering

Of course this is a diet coke can so I needed to cut out the D. I found out the easiest way to keep the shaping was to cut the letters and pull the outside icing around from the letters rather than trying to prise the letters out. 

D for Diet

The newest coke cans now have letters on them so to personalise the cake for the birthday lady I decided to put her name on the outside as well. 

Share with Wendy

To finish the cake off I painted some lines on the side to represent the small lettering on the side. There's no way I could write all the detail and hopefully this gives the representation of the ingredients etc. I also used some left over silver icing to create a rim on the cake and a ring pull on the top. 

Here are some pictures of the cake from all angles. 

Side 1

Side 2

Side 3

Side 4

Top view

I was fairly happy with the cake but as usual there is much room for improvement and many things I didn't think were great. I'm looking forwards to learning some tips so I can further improve my cakes and make them much better. 

If you're interested in ordering a cake from me, I'm currently doing them for just the cost of the ingredients (August 2013). This cake was £20. I can produce cakes for people in the Sussex area and also London if given enough notice. 

Garden Cake

I wanted to make my Nanna a birthday cake and decided on the theme of a garden. She mentioned previously that she would like a chocolate cake so that is what I made. I used the following recipe for a 8" cake. The original recipe is for a 12" cake so I had to scale this down for the cake. Gary worked out the calculations, however, we this was still too much mixture for the tin so I baked a mini cake as well for him to take to work. 

Ingredients:

260g Butter

260g Plain Chocolate

40ml Coffee

2tsp Vanilla Essence

260g Plain Flour

1tsp Baking Powder

1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

380g Light Soft Brown Sugar

4 Eggs

227ml Soured Cream

Method:

Melt together the chocolate and the butter, over a low heat, until fully melted.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate and sugar.

Whisk together the eggs and soured cream.

Add the chocolate mix and the egg mixture to the flour and stir until fully mixed. The mixture should be thick and chocolatey.

Pour into a lined 8" tin and place in the oven. Cook at 150oC for around 2 hours. You should leave the cake to cool in the tin, I made the mistake of taking it out hot, you need it to form a more solid structure. 

I made some chocolate buttercream to go on the cake. 250g Butter to 500g icing sugar and 1tbsp of cocoa mixed together until smooth. I also added a little milk to soften it up enough to be spreadable. I cut the cake in half and placed buttercream inside the cake and then around the outside of the cake. 

Cake covered in chocolate buttercream

I coloured some icing green, rolled it and covered the cake completely. 

Covered in green icing

Then I set about making the different bits for the top. I decided to make some cauliflowers, cabbages, leeks and carrots. I used my dummy cake to get an idea of sizes and to work out the layout before doing the real cake. 

Cabbages and cauliflowers

The cabbages and cauliflower are made in a simlar way using a pea sized piece of icing for the centre. This is then surrounded my leaves and stuck around, the tops are slightly bent over and it's all pushed together. 

I made the carrots and leeks by making sausages in the correct shapes. For the leeks I then cut out rectangles and stuck them around the edges folding over the tops. For the carrots I stuck a small amount of green on the top and then cut a cross on the top folding over the edges. 

To make the paving slabs I marbed some icing with black colouring and cut them into squares. The fencing was done in a similar way with white and I used a tooth pick to score lines in them. 

Practicing the layout

I then stuck it all on the actual cake. I made a rectangle for the front

Just the writing left

Painted on "Happy Birthday" using a paintbrush and some gel colour mixed with water. 

Then take some photos of the finished cake. 

One side

The other side

Close up of the cauliflower and leeks

Close up of carrots and cabbages

Front view

The verdict: I was pleased with how the cake looked and tasted. All the comments were very positive and my nanna seemed very pleased with her surprise. Most people could identify the vegetables, the carrots were more of a challenge but they were in the ground so not so obvious. Still improvements to be made but I was pleased. 

Don't forget I'm available to make cakes to order. At the moment (August 2013) I'm making cakes for just the cost of the ingredients, this cake would cost £15. Please get in touch if you have any event coming up and we can discuss your requirements. 

Pink and Flowery Birthday Cake

This cake was a bit of a last minute decision. We had 2 family birthdays within 2 days of each other and I was originally going to make the cakes the same week, however, a last minute trip to London meant I could do this one a bit earlier. It isn't the most inspiring design but it gave me the chance to practice a few bits and pieces. 

I decided to make a chocolate cake so I used a standard recipe:

200g Self Raising Flour

200g Butter

200g Sugar

4 Eggs

I also added a little baking powder because I didn't use real butter and I now know this makes quite a difference. Once the cake was cooked and cooled I made some butter icing:

250g Butter

500g Icing Sugar

and flavoured it slightly with orange essence. The whole cake was then filled and covered in the icing and placed in the fridge whilst I prepared the rest. 

I decided to decorate the cake with a base colour of pink, so using gel colours, I kneaded this into some ready made icing until the colour was even. I then rolled this out between 2 sheets of clingfilm and lay it on top smoothing with my hands to get an even finish. 

Pink cake

I wanted to pipe some wording onto the top of the cake. I've never really done complex piping before and was unsure what icing to use but I decided to give it a shot with just icing sugar and water coloured slightly purple. I wanted the icing to not be too runny that it would spread everywhere but also be thin enough to pipe evenly. 

Using a letter mould I carefully indented the icing with the letters so I had a stencil to pipe onto.

Lettered indentations

I then piped the icing on top. A few letters came out a bit spread out so I scraped them off and tried again. I was reasonably happy with my efforts but I will definitely have to research and practice this further. 

Piped lettering

I then wanted to decorate the cake with flowers creating an almost lace feel. I have loads of cutters so I rolled out some white icing and set about cutting flowers of all shapes and types. I started at one point and spread out using the little flowers to fill the gaps. It was all done by eye and what I thought looked good. I didn't want to overload the cake but I also wanted them to look like they belonged. I decided to decorate down the side of the cake as well so it looked like the cake was drapped rather than just stuck on the top.

Finished cake

Flowers cover the side as well as the top

Overall I was quite pleased with the cake. The flowers came out very nicely but the lettering could have been better. 

I am looking forward to attending a cake decorating course in September where I will be learning more techniques and improving my skills. I will keep you update with my progress and I'm sure they'll be many pictures of my practicing. 

Don't forget I'm available to make cakes to order. At the moment I'm just charging the cost of the ingredients. This cake would have cost £10. Please get in touch and we can see if I can make something to your taste and preferences. 

Help me to make this work...

I haven't got any more baking to share with you today but I wanted to encourage people to spread the word about my "business". As you know I am trying to branch out and spread the word that I'm creating cakes to order at present (July 2013) for the cost of just the ingredients. If you like the cakes I've created then you can really help me out by doing one, or several, of the following simple things. 

1) Like my facebook page found here. Even if you aren't local to the area your friends will be able to see you've liked the page and then maybe they'll like and their friends will see and the circle gets bigger and bigger. The more people that see it the more chance I have of them being local enough to order something. 

2) Tell people about my blog or any cakes you may particularly like. If they then start looking at the blog then they'll tell others etc etc and again my circle will widen. 

3) Order a cake!! and then tell people where you got it from. This is a bit location dependant but to start with I'm willing to get cakes out to anywhere in Sussex or London or take orders in advance and send them off with members of my family..

Whilst you may not be local, may not be able to order a cake, you can still help me out. I really want this business to be a sucess and judging by the number of page views I'm getting on here I must be doing something right. So now I'm asking for your help, the Mini Manley Bakery would like to get off the ground :). 

New Logo

The Final Eeyore Cake

I wanted to write a quick post on the eeyore cake that I made for M&M's party yesterday, it's basically the same as the previous one I made with just a few additions.

Firstly I made 2 chocolate sponges like this one  and I added chocolate chips, 50g milk, 50g white and 50g of honeycomb pieces to each. 

These were placed in the fridge overnight and then carved, as described on the previous cake, and covered with icing. I also covered the cake board with icing so there was a nice finish surrounding the cake. 

Next day I started the details on the cake. First thing was to colour the icing for the nose and ears. I stuck the nose on and rolled out the icing for the ears. I first cut the purple icing, freehand, to create the shape. Using the first ear as the template I cut another purple piece and then 2 pink pieces. Placing one pink on top of a purple I trimmed around the pink to make it slightly smaller. I discovered it's better to do this than cut it before the pieces are together because as you pick them up the icing tends to stretch a little. 

Using purple icing I shaped the legs, these are pure blocks of icing, and tail. I cut a piece of pink into a long strip and folded it over to make the bow. Finally I stuck some white onto the face for the eyes. 

Without the details

The next step was to create all the details. I dyed some icing black and made little balls for the eyes. I then rolled small sausages for the hair on the head and tail. I also used thinner sausages for the eyebrows and nose details. 

I then coloured some icing blue, red, green and yellow for the ribbon detailing and the hat. To make the hat I shaped some blue icing into a cone shape for the hat. I then rolled out each of the colours into long strips. By holding one end and carefully twisting the icing you get the ribbon effect. I also cut thin strips for the hat. 

Finished cake

I was very happy with the final cake and got lots of comments on how nice the cake was. 

As I reminder, I am avaliable to take orders in the local area. At present (July 2013) I'm just charging for the ingredients, this cake was around £25. If you have an idea of what you'd like in a cake or even if you don't, please get in touch. 

M&M is ready for her party.. 

Rectangular Sponge Cake 35cm x 24cm

For my celebration cake baking this week it wasn't about creating a great piece of artwork but working on a recipe that would work in my new cake tin and rise beautifully. The cake tin is 35cm x 24cm and is rectangular. This is the tin I use for most of my shaped cake designs so it is important to get the recipe right. 

I originally made a 6 egg recipe for the tin, however, I found that the cake was very dense and hadn't risen properly so I did a bit of research on the internet. I found out that using butter in cakes is important. I have previously used cheap soft spread and found that my mixtures where very soft, apparently this results in dense cakes. So I used proper butter for this recipe. I also looked up recipes and decided to up my egg content a little and used 8. Finally I added baking powder to my recipe to help it lift a little. 

Ingredients:

400g Butter

400g Self Raising Flour

400g Caster Sugar
1tbsp Cocoa

8 Eggs

2 tsp baking powder

Method:

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the flour, cocoa and baking powder (I know this breaks from the convential order but I've always done this to prevent splitting) and mix together. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing them in carefully. Pour the mixture into an already lined tin and place in the oven. I cooked this at 180oC (fan oven) for around 30 minutes and then 20minutes at 150oC. I checked the cake with a knife and it came out clean so I left it to cool on a rack. 

Cake just turned out of tin, upside down!! 

I decided to decorate the cake with orange buttercream. This was made with 300g Butter, 600g Icing sugar, 2 tsp of orange essence and 2 tbsp of milk. I cut the cake in half, yes it was risen enough to do that this time, and place it in the middle and over the top. I then decorated it with various bits I had in the cupboard including chocolate chunks, honeycomb pieces, marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles.

Finished cake

The verdict: The cake looked like the correct quantity for the tin when raw, it was around 3/4 full so room for rising. When I got it out of the oven it looked like it had risen really nicely and felt very light and fluffy when I pressed on the top. Thanks to my bake-O-glide the cake has come out of the tin beautifully and has a great height to it.

Sliced cake

The cake tasted really good, I would add a little more cocoa next time but I'm really happy with the overall recipe. This will be perfect for the Eeyore cake I'm creating next week. 

The Future

Now that I'm back on my feet and able to do much more baking, my mind has now naturally progressed to the future. I would love to use my baking as the basis to a small business with either baked goods or creating celebration cakes. I have now added an enquires page to my blog so that people know I available for orders in the Sussex area. I'm willing to make whatever is requested and, for the time being, it'll be at the price of the ingredients. 

I need to raise my profile and do more practice,this is why I'm taking every opportunity to practice designing cakes and learning new skills. I would love to take some courses but for now I'll continue working on these things myself from books and magazines. I hope that some of you think that my cakes have potential and would be willing to buy these in the future. 

Along these lines, Gary and I have been designing logos this weekend and we'd like some input. There are 4 below and we'd like to know which is your favourite and portrays my baking business. If anyone has some better ideas, please feel free to send me that too.

Top left is 1, Top right is 2, bottom left is 3 and Bottom left is 4.