Well, this week’s bake even by standards was very last minute. It was my Grandma’s birthday on Thursday and I wanted to make her a little cake, whilst I was home from uni. This blog should be interesting because so much kept going wrong. I wanted to make a letter cake for my Grandma, so a P for Pauline. As you can see from the picture my cake looks nothing like that at all and I did some major improvisation to make something.
So, I’d thought about this cake for a while and I was originally going to make a shortbread and make a p template. Then I found Wilton’s Countless Creations tin, with inserts that allow you to make any number or letter. I was so excited to make this cake and I thought it would be perfect. The tin arrived on Wednesday and if the board I bought being too small wasn’t a sign of what was to come I don’t know what is. For the first attempt I didn’t know how much mixture to put in the tin, so I started by making one batch. I added 175g of self raising flour, caster sugar, butter, 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon of baking powder into a bowl. I added some butterscotch flavouring and mixed it together. I added the inserts into the tin to make the P shape and greased the tin. I added all the mixture into the tin, this was the perfect amount. I baked this cake for 16 minutes at 175 degrees. I was really confident when this first out, until it wouldn’t come out of the tin and got severely stuck. I tried again and the same thing happened it got stuck again. At this point I was losing time and to make matters worse I realised I only had enough butter to make one batch of cakes. Even with my next P worked I couldn’t make two of them. I had to scrap the letter cake idea, hopefully I’ll try that again in the future.
With time running out and me being short of ideas, I decided to make a small mini cake. I repeated the recipe above and lined some smaller round tins. Luckily these cakes baked perfectly, and only took 20 minutes. It rose to a perfect height but I was completely unsure how I was going to decorate it. My day was summed up when I used some leftover mixture and was going to make some cupcakes and I dropped the tin into the oven upside down when I was putting them into bake. My heart just sank and I was paranoid that I was going to drop the one cake I had. It was like 2 hours before we were going out and the cake was still not decorated. I made my own buttercream, 250g unsalted butter softened and 500g icing sugar, with a dash of milk. I got my mam to help mix it together after she came in from work. I added a few drops of vanilla flavouring and I have to say this buttercream tasted lush.
I levelled the cakes so they were flat. I bought a new Wilton nozzle 6B shape because I was going to use this for the letter cake. In the piping bag, I put some pink food colouring on the inside of the bag to give some colour to it. I piped the buttercream onto the cake and it created like a star shape with the icing. Surprisingly when I put the second cake on top it kept its shape. I did the same on the top of the cake, on the outside. I had no idea what to do in the middle so I decided to colour some buttercream blue and piped a swirl into the centre. I added some glitter in the middle because it needed a sparkle. On the tops of the peaks I added some mini sugar flowers by Culpitt. Around the base I put some more of the blue icing because it looked a little bare. As I’d already bought some strawberries for the original cake, I thought why not add some glitter to them and place them on the board.
When we went out for a meal for my Grandma’s birthday I gave her my cake and she was well impressed, although it was small she was happy with it and loved the colours. But of course that wasn’t the only surprise we had, my mams work colleague makes amazing cakes. Lisa made my Grandma a fantastic cake themed around Afternoon Tea, all the tiny details were perfect and as per usual Lisa did an amazing job - she’s very talented! You can see the brilliant cake she made below.
It’s been lovely being back home from uni for a bit and I was happy I got the chance to make my Grandma a little cake. Although it wasn’t what I wanted it to be it was simple and colourful, after the day I’d had it was a miracle in itself that a cake even left the kitchen. I’ll be back at uni this weekend so who knows what I’ll be making for next weeks blog. Remember its Shrove Tuesday next week, so keep an eye on my Instagram and possibly a recipe for next week’s blog. Have a lovely week whatever you find yourself doing.
Lots of Love,
Hannah x
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