Halloween cake

At the play group me and my boys go to on a Wednesday we are having a Halloween party. I have been put in charge of sandwiches. So naturally I've made a cake.

I decided to do a simple Madeira cake and make it two spooky colours

RECIPE:
(This is enough for an 8" round cake tin)

12oz self raising flour
10oz caster sugar
10oz butter
5eggs
3 tablespoons milk

METHOD:

Sift flour into a large bowl

Add all the other ingredients

Mix until everything is combined (yes it's that easy)

Then divide the mix into two bowls and add the colours you want to the mixture (I used orange and green as the mix is quite yellow and obviously orange and green are already half yellow so they wouldn't look funny colours)

Mix well

Line your cake tin

Pour the mix's into the cake tin (you can't see on the picture but the orange is at the bottom) It is quite a thick mix so once it is in the tin you have to spread it with a spatula to make it flat and go all the way to the edge.

Then bake for 1 1/2 hours on 150oC or until a skewers inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean

Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minuets then turn out onto a cooling rack. (I forgot to take a photo of what it looked like when it came out the oven, but there wasn't much to see as it was just brown-cake coloured)

Once cool it's ready to decorate how you like

I had a few comments on how I made the spider...basically, think the fondant is play dough, and think your 4!! It's that easy!! Oh, and stick all the bits together with a bit of water

Inside, not as bright as the rainbow cake, I think I made the right decision making it green and orange!

Christmas cake

I wasn't going to blog about my Christmas cake, but I was asked to so I decided I would.

You need to start your Christmas cake in October as you need lots of brandy in it which you feed into the cake as often as you like after the cake is cooked until you are ready to decorate it.

This is based on Delia's classic Christmas cake. I was trying to follow it perfectly but I made a couple of mistakes, One was I put my grated orange and lemon zest in to soak over night with the rest of the fruit and also once I'd put the cakes in the oven I realised I hadn't put the chopped almonds in-oops!! Also I made enough for 2 cakes (one large, one small). But it's not like I forgot the currents so it's just a nutless Christmas cake!

This blog will be edited after is it decorated and eaten so I can let everyone know if it tastes ok even though I forgot the nuts!!

INGREDIENTS:

(I found it easier to weigh in "old money" but you can look at Delia's recipe for a conversion-remember I did the recipe-plus half again)

1.5lb currents
9oz sultanas
9oz raisins
3oz glacé cherries, chopped
3oz mixed peel
5 tablespoons brandy (plus extra for feeding after the cake is cooked)

12oz plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon mixed spice

12oz unsalted butter
12oz soft brown sugar
6 eggs

3oz chopped almonds (which I didn't put in)
2 desert spoons black treacle

zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange

EQUIPMENT:
3 large bowls
one large jug
a tea towel
hand blender
wooden spoon
sieve
8" round cake tin
7" loaf tin
lots of parchment or greaseproof paper


METHOD:

(the bold words are so I can remember which order everything is meant to go for next year!!)

The night before you want to make the cake you need to weigh all the fruit, currents, sultanas, raisins, glacé cherries and  mixed peel (I also added the zest of the lemon and orange although the original recipe says to add these at the end). Then pour on the 5 tablespoons of brandy and stir. Then cover with a clean tea towel and leave for at least 12 hours (I left it for about 17 hours)

NEXT DAY

Line your cake tin

Weigh out the flour, salt, nutmeg and mixed spice and sieve together

Weigh out the sugar and butter and cream those together in your biggest bowl with the blender. This takes a while and is actually really hard work!!

Crack your eggs into the jug and whisk with a fork

Gradually add your eggs into the creamed butter and sugar a little at a time until all the egg is combined.

Fold the sieved flour and spiced into the sugar/egg/butter mix

Add the fruit, nuts (which I forgot about) and treacle and fold those in (this again is pretty hard work!!)

Then spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tins and smooth it so it's level. The cake isn't intended to rise but it will slightly.

I cooked it on 140oC for 2 1/2 hours for the small cake and 4 1/2 hours for the big cake

Once the cake is done, put it on a cooling tray and leave to cool in the tin for half an hour before removing it from the tin and paper and leaving to cool completely.

Once fully cool prick the cake several times all over with a cocktail stick. This is so when you feed the cake more brandy it can get into the holes. Then wrap it in more parchment and keep in a cake tin.

Once a week (r more if you like your cake boozy) remove the cake from the tin and parchment and carefully cover it in brandy then recover it and store away. Do this every week until you want to decorate it





SO..


2 months later after weekly stabbing with a cocktail stick and "feeding" with brandy the cake is ready to decorate. As I take the cake out of the box it's been in for 2 months I can smell the brandy so I'm recommending anyone who eats it does so when they don't have to drive!! (ignore the mess in the pictures, I am also making many other Christmas food items at the same time!!)

You will need:

Apricot Jam
Marzipan
Fondant
Decorations


First cover the cake in a layer or melted apricot jam

Roll out the marzipan and cover the cake, remove excess

Add another layer of apricot jam

Cover in fondant

Decorate

I took inspiration from THIS CAKE but you can do it how ever you want. There are no rules on this part!


THERE WILL BE ANOTHER EDIT WITH IT CUT AND HOW IT TASTES!

Rainbow Cake

First, this didn't turn out quite how I'd expected. I should have either used 2 lots of the cake mix or used smaller tins, also I didn't realise until it was pointed out to me that I should have used flower paste or Mexican paste for the letter as the cutters I bought for decoration don't work on fondant so I had to make the letters by hand (and late at night when I was mad at the icing and cutters) so they aren't great, bur really, it's a rainbow cake, who's going to care about the outside.

I made this for my son's 1st birthday. I got a lot of help and inspiration from friends. Also I'd like to say I cheated on this quite a bit, but mainly because it calls for a while cake mix and looking on line for how to make a white cake it called for all sorts of things that I had no idea what they were.

To make the colours really stand out you are going to need gel food colouring as this is much more vibrant than the liquid stuff you can get in the supermarket. It's pretty easy to use and work with, but if it gets on your skin your dyed (I currently have blue, green and red fingers)

For the added "WOW" for the grown-ups I covered it in white ready roll fondant icing (there is no way I'm making my own!!) so the un-suspecting adults were just expecting a cake nicely decorated but instead had a huge wow of the colours of the cake.

So, for the cake....

INGREDIENTS:

1 box of Betty Crocker WHITE cake mix (you can only get this off the internet unless you happen to have an american grocery shop near you)

3 egg whites
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup water
6 gel food colourings (I bought Sugarfalir ones)


METHOD:

Mix everything in a bowel with an electric hand mixer until smooth

Put equal amounts of the cake mix into separate small bowels. I used a ladle.

Use a cocktail stick to put the food colouring into the mix and stir (I actually found the red really hard to work it but I got there in the end. Also, yes they are weaning spoons!!)

Then pour the mix into the baking trays, most in the bottom layer and work your way up

Bake at 170oC for 25 minuets or until a cocktail stick pushed into the centre comes out clean (Someone came to the door just as it was time to take them out the oven so they were cooked a bit too long and spit, but they will be fine)

Wait for them to cool slightly then turn them out onto a cooling tray and wait to cool completely before decorating.

TO DECORATE

Obviously you can decorate it how ever you like but this is what I did.

INGREDIENTS:

Jam

butter cream (you can easily make your own but I bought white from the supermarket)

ready roll fondant icing (again, you can make your own but I also cheated and got it from the supermarket)

Gel food colouring

METHOD:

Put jam and butter cream on the top of one of the cakes and place the other talk on top

Then cover the while cake in butter cream so the fondant has something to stick to. Smooth with a spatula or pallet knife and put in the fridge to harden

Cover a clean work surface in icing sugar and kneed the fondant until it reaches a workable consistency (it's a bit like play dough). Then roll the fondant out until it is around 3mm/4mm thick, taking care to have plenty of icing sugar to stop it sticking.

Carefully pick it up, rolling it round the rolling pin and draping it over the cake. Then smooth it down and cut off any excess (there are loads of videos on Youtube on how to use fondant icing)

To colour the fondant use a cocktail stick to put some of the food colouring onto the fondant. Then (I'd recommend you wear food grade gloves so you don't die your hand) kneed the colour in. It doesn't take long before you start seeing it change colour. 

If it's not as dark as you'd like then ass more and kneed again. Remember to use plenty of icing sugar to prevent sticking

When all the colours are kneaded in you can decorate it how you like (I was going to put small letters on the cake but the cutters were meant for use with flower pate or Mexican paste)

If the fondant starts getting a little dry when your working with it then kneed it again and it softens up

And to stick the fondant down just use a little water

Also once it was dry all the icing sugar faded so it's not covered in white specks

It went down amazingly. Everyone was really shocked and quite surprised why I wanted them all to look at it before it was cut! I'm so glad I made it