So, this week’s cake celebrates VE day and I’m so happy with how this cake turned out. This year marks the 75th Anniversary marking the end of fighting during World War II. It’s important to remember 75th years on all the brave soldiers who fought in the war. I know this year celebrations have been disrupted due to recent events but my family like most others are putting a party on in our garden. I’ve made this cake to help us celebrate and my mam is planning on decorating the garden. What are your lockdown plans to celebrate VE day?
For the cake I started by making some of the decoration first. Last night I printed out some decorations on edible paper. I don’t use my edible printer as much as I would like but this cake was the perfect excuse. I found some propaganda photos from the War, a ration book, and an identity card. I also printed out some Union Jacks but didn’t know how I was going to put them on my cake. I also practiced making some poppies using flower and modelling paste. I’ve never used this before so needed the practice. I coloured some white paste red and rolled it out quite thin about 2-3mm. I cut out two five petalled flowers. Using a sponge I used a roller tool and rolled over the edges to bring the petals to life. I also used a crimped tool to add some indents to the petals. Using some edible glue I stuck one flower on top of the other. I added another drop of edible glue and stuck some poppy seeds to the centre. Using my mini cupcake tin I placed the poppies in the holes so they set slightly raised around the edges. The flowers go hard that’s why I decided to do them first when I came to baking my cake. I made around 7 poppies and just repeated these steps.
For the cakes I made double the mix, making four 8inch cakes. I added 350g self raising flour, sugar, butter, 6 eggs and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. I ran out of vanilla extract this week and turns out finding vanilla at the minute is just as hard as finding flour. My mam was a star when she did her shopping and managed to find me some. I’m using the vanilla so sparingly until it becomes better stocked. I whisked this all together until it was smooth and baked two cakes at a time for 20 minutes. I had a cake nightmare one of them so made a new one but that was no trouble because I wasn’t in a hurry. Once I had my four cakes I let them cool completely.
I had a busy week baking this week trialling some blondies and some brownies. I also had two 24 cupcake orders which was fun. From this I had some buttercream leftover, I used this buttercream for the crumb coat. Whilst I was doing this my mam made the buttercream for my cake, doubling the mixture. She whisked 500g butter for five minutes and then gradually added 1kg icing sugar. I stacked by cakes using vanilla buttercream and some strawberry jam. I bought a new scraper from Finch Bakery and was very impressed with the results. I left the cake for around 15 minutes. I piped some white buttercream on the cake and smoother it out. I then used the striped side of my scraper and it left stripes in my cake. In the gaps I added blue and red buttercream. I then smoothed this out, for a first attempt I was happy and then added a little more red. I wanted to go for a rustic look and was bothered it wasn’t perfect. The buttercream smoothed out really nicely.
I finished the cake by placing the poppies and the edible paper. My favourite part of the cake was easily the poppies and I could quite happily have made a cake covered in them. I added the books and posters to the cake using some edible glue, with the help of my mam. Out of the whole cake the flag on top took the ages with my dad thinking he was a genius for helping make it work. I love the poppies at the forefront of the cake. I think this cake screams VE day and the little black and white images of celebrations add a touch of history. At 3pm on the 8th May 1945 Winston Churchill announced the war in Europe had come to an end and spontaneous celebrations broke out across the country. This year celebrations have been adapted we’ll be facetiming my grandparents and having our own party in the garden, with the cake being at the centre. I hope you enjoy safely celebrating and have a great week.
Lots of love,
Hannah x
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