So, this week’s blog is based on my Dad’s birthday cake I made last week. I absolutely loved this cake and I think it might actually be one of my favourite cakes I’ve made. Me and my Dad share a massive love for football and with that are big Newcastle United fans. I think we are both missing football a little bit at the minute and I wanted his cake to combine not only football but beer as well. We both enjoy a couple of pints at the match. I always get sent to get the drinks at halftime so thought I’d give him a bottle in this cake to make up for the drinks I haven’t been getting at the football. I had so many ideas for this cake and originally I wanted to make it look like a beer bucket with ice and Corona bottles coming out of the top. I was all set to make ice out of Isomalt sugar but when I came to making the cake I just really wasn’t feeling the idea. Bottles of Corona just make me think of the matches, typical pre-match drink. I wanted to move the cake in a different direction, I knew I wanted to incorporate a bottle of beer. Newcastle Brown Ale seemed perfect, first made in 1927 it soon became a popular beer in the North East. I love this cake for many reasons one being I know myself and my whole family are proud of where we come from. At the minute life isn’t normal, so for my Dad to have a birthday in lockdown me and my Mam wanted to make it special, in this blog I’ll also talk about what we did for my Dad’s birthday.
I mainly just discussed the cake design with my Mam, so it could be more of a surprise to my Dad. I did however let him chose the flavour, he picked blueberry and coconut. I made four cakes to get a good height on the cake. When I started I wanted to put the bottle in the middle of the cake. For the cakes I added 350g self-raising flour, sugar, butter, 6 eggs and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. I added some vanilla extract and about 50g of desiccated coconut. In hindsight I should’ve added more coconut, I feel the flavour got a little lost. I also added a handful of chopped blueberries. I mixed this all together and evenly divided it between my tins, adding some whole blueberries on top and covering them over. I actually loved how the blueberries baked into the cake. I baked the cakes two at a time for 25 minutes until they were golden at 180 degrees. Once I had all of the cakes I let them cool and wrapped them in clingfilm. I made the cakes the day before I needed them. I did this so I could have longer to think about how I was going to decorate them and could solely focus on the decoration the next day.
I let my Mam make the buttercream and she actually did a good job. I made double the amount to start with but needed to make a little more later on. As usual I use a 2:1 ratio of icing sugar and milk. My Mam always has a go at me for how much mess I make when I bake, this time when we were making the buttercream she made a little icing sugar cloud. It’s safe to say I didn’t let her forget it. I used 500g unsalted butter and whipped it for 5 minutes and then got my Mam to gradually add 1kg of icing sugar. To get it smooth I added a dash of milk along with some vanilla flavouring. As Newcastle play in black and white I wanted to make the buttercream stripy when you cut into it. I coloured some buttercream black but the closest I could get it was a darker grey which really annoyed me. Nevertheless I still went with my idea. I put some white buttercream and some dark grey buttercream in a piping bag. I alternated piping the middle of the cakes. Once the cakes were filled I covered the cake in a crumb coat using the white buttercream. I wanted the Brown Ale to sit in the front of the cake and cut out the cake so it was able to fit. At this stage I was very happy.
I put it in the fridge whilst I worked on the decoration. You can see from the photo below what the cake looked like when it was cut into.
Obviously, going for a football themed cake how cool would it be to make the cake have a football pattern. That’s exactly what I did. I loved how my Grandma’s birthday cake turned out but on this occasion I used a smaller hexagon cutter to make the football affect more prominent. I rolled out some white icing and coloured some icing black. I had to make a lot of hexagons to cover the cake, but it was totally worth it to gain the overall finish of the cake. I had to use a lot of black colouring to get a dark enough colour on the icing. I added another coat of buttercream to the cake and put the bottle of beer in place. Using a football template online, I worked from either side of the bottle around placing the hexagons on the cake. It took some time and you had to work out where you needed to cut them to get the edges straight. Finally the cake was covered and I was buzzing. I was still unsure what to put on top as I hadn’t had time to order a cake topper. Then I thought I would make it grassy to look like a football pitch. I coloured some buttercream green and piped the grass on top using a grass nozzle. I was convinced it was missing something so added some black and white sprinkles on top. I think this cake has a purpose and each detail on the cake is there for a reason.
My dad had been painting the garden and the shed last week and painted the shed a lovely blue colour. I love taking my photos in natural light so took the opportunity to find a new spot for my bakes. I’ve been trying to focus more on my photos and ordered a message board to put messages in my photos. I bought a Figurables board and absolutely love it, thought I’d put a little Newcastle chant on the board and I think it makes the photos more striking. As I mentioned I absolutely love this cake and how it turned out, it looked quite simple but the football pattern took its time.
I thought I would add what we did for my Dad’s lockdown birthday. We made a little hunt around the house with little challenges and quizzes for him to complete with beer as prizes. I made a music emoji quiz of Madness songs, anagrams of Newcastle players, we hid scratch cards and beer he had to find. It was practically like a beer hunt, obviously this is easy to change but you could just make different fun challenges. We then had some drinks and enjoyed some cakes. Yes it would’ve been great to have football or the pub but it’s more important to stay safe and adapt to make your own fun. This cake combined two things my Dad was missing, beer and football. As an isolation activity you could try baking and let your imagination run wild. I was also made up at hitting 3000 followers on Instagram this week, it was a great achievement. I hope you have a fantastic week and stay safe, I’ve got some very exciting blogs coming up.
Lots of love,
Hannah xx
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