Sunday Bake | Ombre Petal Birthday Cake

This week was Craig's Birthday which meant that I had a birthday cake to concoct! I've seen this 'petal' technique ALL over Pinterest recently and I just think it looks so cool! I love the effect it gives, and I love abit of ombre too so I knew I wanted to include that element as well. Mustard Yellow is Craig's favourite colour and that was the original idea, but trying to make mustard is REALLY hard! Mine turned out wayy too orange, but its the thought that counts right? I really want to make this again in a Mint Green (my favourite colour!) or a Sea Blue!

The actual cake is a chocolate and vanilla marble, which as usual I over-swirled so the marbling isn't very defined - darn it! All of the icing is a Vanilla Frosting which I just tinted with food colouring to create the ombre effect. As this cake is all about the decoration I'm not going to write a cake recipe, as you can really do any recipe and flavour that you like! But I will give a recipe and some tips on creating the petal effect.

I actually attempted this technique last year and I failed epicly because my frosting was way too runny! It needs to be quite stiff so that it actually holds its shape on the side of the cake. So I decided to use the Vanilla Cupcake Frosting recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book Cake Days as I know that it creates a really stiff mixture. I also had to double the original quantity as this technique uses up a lot of frosting! This is definitely a technique to use for an occasion as it's definitely not light on the calories! Oops!

Vanilla Frosting:

1kg Icing Sugar (ouch!)
320g Unsalted Butter, Softened
100ml Whole Milk
1/2tsp Vanilla Essence

(Sidenote! 1kg of Icing Sugar is a hella lot of Icing, so when whisking you may end up coating yourself in the stuff! I actually made mine in two batches (500g of Icing Sugar in each batch) to make it easier for myself, but its completely up to you!)

1. Whisk the icing sugar with the butter until fully combined and sandy in consistency.
2. Add the vanilla essence to the milk and pour into the butter and icing sugar while mixing slowly.
3. Then increase your speed and using a wooden spoon mix the frosting until light and fluffy.

Now if you want to colour your frosting, separate the frosting into bowls depending on how many different colours you want to create and add food colouring. To create the above, I put half the frosting into one bowl and then halfed the remaining half and put that frosting into two bowls. Was that confusing enough?

Essentially I had three bowls of icing, one with half the original frosting as I needed more of the white icing to fill and crumb coat the cake. The other two bowls I tinted with food colouring, ensuring that one bowl was darker than the other.

Next is assembly! First, I filled the cake with some of the white vanilla frosting and then crumb coated the entire cake and put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes. This is to make it easier for you when piping as you'll have a smooth, flat surface to work with.

Now onto the piping! It really is so simple, I promise. Starting at the bottom pipe two circles with the white frosting, above that two circles of the yellow frosting and above that two circles of the 'mustard' frosting. Then using a spatula spread each circle to the right making sure to clean the spatula inbetween different colours. You then need to do exactly the same, slightly to the right of the original circle. If you want to create the ombre effect pipe the first line as normal, then on the second line pipe one circle of the darkest colour frosting at the bottom and work up as normal for that line. Then on the next line pipe two circles of the darkest colour frosting at the bottom and again work up as normal. Repeat that all the way around the cake and you will see the pretty pattern appear.

I hope you like the cake anyway and I hope this all makes sense, its actually quite hard to write down but is super easy to create! Let me know if you have any questions :)

Aimée
Xxxx

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Sunday Bake | Chocolate and Salted Caramel Rosette Cake

Chocolate and Salted Caramel? HELLO. Not gonna lie, I enjoyed making this cake farr too much purely as licking the bowl was an even bigger delight than usual. I made this for my best friend Amy's 23rd Birthday and I have to say, vainly I'm pretty damn proud of it! I love how pretty rosette cakes look but had always thought they'd be really tricky to make. I was so wrong though! As long as you get the right consistency of buttercream, piping the rosettes couldn't be simpler. I definitely want to make it again to get my rosettes even tidier!

To make the cake I didn't follow one recipe, I took a few different ideas and jumbled them all together. Essentially though, you can use any Chocolate cake recipe you like! I used my favourite Hummingbird Bakery muffin recipe and doubled the quantity to make a layer cake. For the Chocolate frosting I used a Hummingbird Bakery recipe again, but any recipe will do so long as it makes thick pipable (is that a word??) frosting.

The Salted Caramel Frosting however I borrowed from Sallys Baking Addiction. Her recipe makes the tastiest, thickest frosting ever. Its total foodgasm worthy. I urge you to make it now!! I used Molasses instead of Dark Brown Sugar which I think gave a slightly richer, deeper taste and I only let my caramel bubble for 2 minutes instead of 3. But its all personal preference really.

One tip I would say is, use the salted caramel frosting quickly once its cooled as I left mine a little too long and it became slightly hard to work with when I was piping. If this does happen, boil the kettle and pour the water into a bowl, then place your filled piping bag in the water for a few seconds to soften the frosting.

So to assemble! Sandwich your two chocolate cakes together with some of the salted caramel frosting and place in the fridge for 5 minutes to set. Then using a small amount of the chocolate frosting crumb coat the cake to make it easier to pipe the rosettes onto. Place in the fridge again for 10-15 minutes to firm up. Finally, if you have a duo-colour icing bag simply place each frosting in the bag and pipe away. If like me you don't, then its easy to DIY it. Just take a normal piping bag fitted with a star tip, and spread the chocolate frosting inside one half of the bag, turn it over and place the salted caramel frosting inside the other half. Then when you apply pressure to pipe, both frostings will join together and pipe as one. Its tricky to see the difference in colour in my frostings as the molasses made my caramel quite dark. If you used dark brown sugar as stated in the recipe however you should see more of a contrast.

To pipe the rosettes, start from the middle and pipe outwards in a circular motion. Depending on the size of your cake you could do two rows of smaller rosettes around the edge, but I decided to stick to one large rosette. The beauty of it is that they can look quite mismatched and still look really pretty. I touched up any spaces between the rosettes with curved lines.

I hope this has given you inspiration for the next celebration cake you make, or at least made you want to try the salted caramel frosting! Let me know if you do attempt the cake! :)

Aimée
Xxxx

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A Beauty Lovers Birthday.

My baby cousin Lilia helped me blow out my candles :)

Annoying middle parting - darn you!

So I am a very lucky lady :) It was my Birthday this week and my sister made me this amazing cake!! Aside from tasting superr yummy (coffee and chocolate with chocolate frosting - don't ask about the calories!) it just looks incredible! And, as it was completely make-up related - I thought you lovely readers might like a peek :) I think the brushes are my favourite - they just look so realistic!

Aimée
Xxxx

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Baking | "You Sound Like You're From Lanndann"

I often make fancy birthday cakes for friends and family, and last weekend I went to stay with my boyfriend Craig for his birthday. Naturally, I therefore made a cake! Last year I made him iPhone cupcakes (check them out HERE) which still probably hold the record for the best thing I've ever made. This year I went for a London theme as he's always wanted to live here, and obviously from visiting me we have lots of London memories together. So for the baking inclined of you, here's the steps to make your very own 'London cake' :)

The actual cake is Red Velvet - its one of my all time favourite cake flavours, if you haven't tried it I seriously recommend it! The recipe I'm using is from The Hummingbird Bakery and is actually intended for cupcakes - but a small note states that for a cake you just need to double all quantities. Therefore to make a cake you'll need;

Cake;                                                              
* 240g Unsalted Butter * 600g Caster Sugar * 4 Large Eggs * 40g Cocoa Powder * 80ml Red Food Colouring * 2 tsp Vanilla Essence * 600g Plain Flour * 2 tsp Salt * 480ml Buttermilk * 2 tbsp White Wine Vinegar * 2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda *

Frosting; (I used the amount specified for cupcakes, as I didn't need that much frosting)
* 100g Unsalted Butter * 600g Icing Sugar * 250g Full-Fat Cream Cheese *

Decorations;
* Coloured Icing of your choice *

Just thought I'd mention now - as you can tell from the ingredients, its not exactly a healthy cake. Completely worth the extra pounds though ;)

So first up you need to preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5/190 degrees, and line two/three baking tins depending on how many layers you want. Then you need to cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Break in the eggs one at a time after this, beating thoroughly after each addition and ensuring you incorporate the whole mixture. You might want to wear an apron at this point, as it can get quite messy with such a large mixture!

In a separate bowl - mix together the cocoa powder, food colouring and vanilla essence to form a paste. This part really does look like blood, tasty I know! Also, sidenote - my sponges ended up so red they were almost brown, so although it depends on the brand of food colouring you're using be careful not to over-dye at this point.

Add this paste to the batter and mix thoroughly. So far so good, right?

Then you need to sift together the flour and salt in another bowl (don't blame me for the washing up!) and add this to the batter in two batches alternating with the buttermilk and mixing thoroughly after each addition. Don't be lazy now. Please do actually sift your flour, your cake will taste all the better for it - I promise!

Finally, in another bowl (I hope you have enough bowls!) mix together the bicarbonate of soda and vinegar and add this to the cake mixture. This will fizz around when you first mix the two ingredients - adding an element of science to the baking and making you feel all the more cultured and less like you are just baking for fun. That's what I tell myself anyway. You can then evenly pour this into two or three lined baking tins, depending on how many layers you want and pop into the oven. If you're making two layers, each sponge should take about 30 minutes (it does depend on your oven obviously though - mine took 45mins!) and for three layers they should take 20 minutes each.

Once you're sure they're cooked (and a knife comes out clean) let them cool on a wire rack.

You then need to make the frosting (definitely an apron affair!). Beat the butter and sugar together, until there are no lumps of butter and the texture is sandy. Add the cream cheese whilst mixing together slowly. Once its incorporated, beat the frosting until soft and fluffy. Sometimes this feels like it's never going to come together, but it will, have patience and try not to eat it all before you've frosted the cake. :)

Once the sponge is cool, spread an even layer of frosting in between the layers and then lightly coat the outside to give the fondant icing something to stick on to. Pop the cake into the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up, making it easier to handle. Then roll out a sheet of white fondant icing and carefully smooth it over. Voila! You're all ready to decorate now. From here you can do any design you want, but for anyone interested in my London cake I'll briefly show you how I did it.

One really handy tip I find for rolling out fondant icing, is to roll it between sheets of baking parchment. You never get it stuck to the work surface/rolling pin/you and its a hell of a lot easier to work with.

I rolled out red, blue and white icing and used makeshift cutters (wine bottle screw lids/icing nozzles) to create the tube stops. My blue icing turned out to be a strangely soft consistency which meant I couldn't write directly on to it with food colouring pens - I therefore had to add little white strips to write the tube stops, slightly annoying but ah well. I rolled out blue icing to create the 'Thames', using a map I'd printed off to trace the shape for accuracy. I then moulded little London landmarks out of various shades of icing and affixed them to the cake with a dab of water to create a 'glue' and cocktail sticks. Before attaching the landmarks to the cake I put them in the fridge for a couple of minutes to harden and ultimately be a lot sturdier on the cake.

So there you have it! My London Landmarks cake. I do hope you can guess what they all are - they're pretty much geographically accurate, so hopefully they're quite obvious.

I really enjoy making cakes like these - obviously you want the Birthday recipient to enjoy the taste of the cake but its also so fun to make a more personalised effort with the decoration. I chose tube stops where me and Craig had frequented a lot or which held a significant meaning to us both. Originally I did make 13 tube stops - but I made them rather large so I couldn't use them all. Less is more and all that jazz.

Let me know what you think of my efforts, and if you've ever made a similar cake?!

Aimée
xxxx

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A Sunday Catch-Up.

Sundays are one of my favourite days; lunch always seems a very long and delicious affair, there's always time to complete to-do lists and with the sun peeking out today it really did feel like Spring was on its way. (I'm dis-regarding the fact that a thunderstorm has started as I type this....)

This week I've been pretty busy, and consequently I haven't posted at all! I have lots of posts in the pipeline, but haven't gotten around to typing them up. I do want to try and post twice a week, so hopefully this won't be too regular an occurrence. :)

So this week was my best friends 22nd Birthday, being limited in cash as I am at the moment I decided to create a 'Home-made treat box' for her to keep on the cheap side! I thought I'd share a few pictures of it and the Birthday cake I made with you now, to tide you over until I've finished writing a beauty related post :)

In the treat box I made Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Powder, Houmous, Button Cookies and Tiny Polaroid Magnets. I did take pictures whilst I was making the magnets and hot chocolate which I'll be writing posts about for the more baking/DIY-minded of you :)

I hope this post gave you some home-made ideas or at least whiled away a few lazy Sunday minutes :) 

Aimée

Xxxx

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