The Renshaw Birthday Cake Challenge

Recently I was contacted by Renshaw Baking to take part in their new Birthday Cake Challenge - to create and decorate a birthday cake using Renshaw products. Renshaw have a brilliant range of colours available now, you can see them for yourselves over at their online store.

For the challenge, I personally chose to use their white ready to roll icing, simply because I like to colour the fondant myself to get the exact shade for my designs. One of the designs I had planned needed shades of the same colour too, so this was a better option. I use Sugarflair gel-based colours, and they colour white fondant really easily, simply by kneading the colour through the paste, you need very little to get the desired colour, and the gels don't alter the consistency of the fondant.

Renshaw also sent me some of their new Flower and Modelling Paste, a stiffer more mailable paste that is perfect for creating delicate sugar flowers. It is also great to use with silicone moulds, as it holds it's shape when taken out of the mould, and sets nice and hard too.

To demonstrate the versatility of these products, I created two cakes using them. The first was a fun Tropical Beach Cake, based specifically on a Goan Beach, and the second a pretty floral 30th Birthday Cake.

Tropical Goan Beach Cake

This cake was so much fun to make! The recipient loves tropical beach holidays, and in particular holidays in Goa. One of the special requests from her daughter was to include a cow, as Goa is quite renowned for it's 'Beach Cows'!

I used the fondant to cover the cake and create the ombre effect waves around the edges. I also used fondant to model the cow. The modelling paste helped to create the stiffer bark and leaves of the palm tree, and the smaller details, including using a silicone mould to create the shells that decorated the edges of the cake. A little light muscavado sugar to act as sand, and voila! Tropical Beach fun!

Pretty Floral 30th Birthday Cake

The joy of this design was in the simplicity, and the Flower and Modelling Paste is a great staple for creating thinner more delicate petals for flowers. Like fondant, it can be coloured with gels to any shade, and by adding petal dust you can get a really pretty petal-like effect. We based the colour pallet on the hydrangea-type flowers that adorn the centre of the 30. I really like this design, and can see it adapted for different ages, flowers and colour pallets - the possibilities are endless!

New Cake Designs and Working With Fondant

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, you'll know by now that I split my time between baking and trying out new recipes, and teaching myself cake decorating techniques. I'm fortunate enough to have some wonderfully supportive and trusting friends, who keep testing me with new designs and requests for their loved ones birthdays and special events. I'm truly grateful to you all, as Gary and I would never be able to eat enough cake to try out all of these ideas (although we do give it a bloomin' good try!) 

So, these are the latest few projects I have been working on over the last few weeks... 

'Cute as a Button' Cake

First up was a gift for a friend who has just had baby number two. The girl's and I descended last Friday night for coffee, cuddles and cake, and I made this adaptation of a basic sponge cake, using raspberry jam, and replacing the traditional buttercream with a white chocolate ganache. I use a button mould from Baked by Me and white chocolate coloured lilac and pink to make a cute button decoration for the sides. The white chocolate and raspberry combination was very tasty, and a great alternative to the traditional Victoria sponge.

Dark Mocha Xbox Controller Cake

The next cake I had to make was for Gary's birthday, my toughest critic, so no pressure! I spent ages trying to decide on a design and a flavour to make this one extra special, and eventually settled on a dark chocolate mocha cake, by adapting my favourite chocolate cake recipe (recipe here). I doubled up the quantities listed on my post, and add two tablespoons of instant coffee to the hot water mixture. I filled the cake with a dark chocolate ganache made with two teaspoons of Tia Maria.  The addition of coffee to this cake enhances the dark chocolate flavour and creates extra depth more than making a strong coffee taste. I spent hours on this cake, making the buttons, and using a toothpick to draw out the details (they aren't really clear from this picture). It took Gary four days before he would cut a slice from this cake, as he didn't want to cut into it, which I think means that I did a good job! The chocolate cake kept well, and the flavours had time to mature, and when we did cut in it was moist, rich and chocolate-y, exactly what I had hoped for!

Fondant Boxers

The next cake I made for my friend's nephew, who was turning nine. She texted me and asked if I would be able to make a boxing ring cake - it is worth noting that I do not have that little part of a brain that allows you to say 'No' - 'of course I can' I texted back... then I panicked. I turned to trusty Google, and started looking at pictures of boxing rings, and boxing ring cakes. The ring itself was pretty straight-forward, it just needed to be square and blue. That's where it got tricky. Nowhere could I see a solution for making the posts edible,and all the forums I looked at came up blank. In the end, I had a flash of inspiration - this is how I made the posts - incredibly delicate and fiddly but it worked a treat. I took four Italian breadsticks, and rolled out some fondant in red, white and blue. I used edible glue to stick the breadsticks to the fondant, and rolled them to cover the sticks completely. I left these to dry and harden overnight. 

Boxing Ring Cake

The following day I took a long skewer, and used it to carefully make three holes through each of the sticks. The brittle breadsticks and hardened fondant were very fragile (I did make a back up set and used them all as I had a few breakages) but in the end I was able to fix the posts to the cake, two white and then a red and a blue corner, and thread strawberry laces through the holes to form the ropes. 

The boxers are made from fondant, and I figured out how to make them after adapting skills from a tutorial on Bake Happy on how to make fondant people. All in all I was really pleased with the outcome of this cake, although I did have to use some white icing as glue which looked a little rough around the edges of some of the posts. 

The final cake to share tonight is one I made for one of my dearest friends to take to her Mum as an early Mother's day gift. This is a simple Victoria sponge, with raspberry jam and buttercream, and originally was going to have sprinkles on top, however a last minute phone-call led to a decision on the doggy toppers. This family love their dogs a great deal, and I really wanted to do justice to the three personalities of the pooches. I asked my friend to send me pictures of the dogs, and got to work with the fondant... these are the finished dogs and their real life pictures, I hope I did them justice! 

 

'Playful Pooches' Cake

Cake School Progress Update

Back in September I signed up to a 10 week course in sugarcraft and cake decorating, run by the Worker's Educational Association (WEA) in Sheffield. I found the company by searching for cake decorating courses online, and they have been brilliant, they run all kinds of courses, you can check them out at www.wea.org.uk

I'm halfway through the course now, and the more I learn, the more I fall in love with cake decorating - which is a big deal for me considering just how short my attention span is! We have completed our first project, started a Christmas themed one, and I am already saving up to enrol on the next course.

For project one, we had to make a small arrangement of roses and carnations. As we were all beginners, we had to learn everything from the start, how use flower paste, how to colour it, shape it, and keep it from drying out. The arrangement we were making was held on wires, and over the week we have built up the components, as they have to dry between each element added.

Step One: Creating Stems and Buds

Step Two: Leaves

Step Three: First Layer of Petals

Step Four: Second Layer of Petals

The Completed Arrangement!

I never expected working with sugar paste could be so rewarding, and the possibilities are seemingly limitless. Working with flower paste is such a delicate task, however the results are amazing, and look so realistic! The flowers are totally edible, however we are taught to be careful about the wires in arrangements such as the one above, and advise 'clients' not to eat them.

I had a great opportunity to try a design with sugarcraft flowers last week when a friend asked me to make a birthday cake for her Mum. After looking at a few options, we decided to create a Cherry Blossom design on a Victoria Sponge cake. I have to say that the internet does provide a wealth of ideas for cake designs, and if you have a basic idea of something you want to achieve, you can get some really good inspiration online. I would add a note of caution however not to carbon copy designs you find online, as many professional cake decorators are very protective over the intellectual property rights of their designs.

Anyway, the idea I came up with was a simple, yet elegant ivory iced cake, with royal iced branches, and shaped cherry blossoms scattered across the surface.

Cherry Blossom Victoria Sponge Cake

I was particularly proud of the fondant icing on this cake, as I have struggled a little getting the icing smooth and even so far. I think I have now mastered the theory behind it, a few more practise attempts needed though I think before I can be totally confident. I suppose that means I have to make some more cakes... it's a hard life! ;-)

Vx

A Fond(ant) Trip Down Memory Lane

There are often things that you remember with a fondness, that, when you experience them again never quite live up to the memory. I remember French Fancies as a special treat, something that you only got at birthday parties, as they were too special for everyday. The only acceptable version was Mr Kipling's and oh! what a treat they were. Soft sponge cake, the sugar sweet iced coating, and the creamy buttercream topping. And so, I hope you understand my disappointment when I chanced upon these little beauties a few weeks ago, and with a now heightened sense of nostalgia, found the sponge to be mass produced and flavourless, the vegetable oil buttercream lacking, and the fondant icing overpoweringly sweet. 

I decided that this weekend's Saturday Experiment should be to try and recreate my childhood favourites, and set about the task in earnest this morning. I started out the way I often do these days - google, and found a range of recipes, which varied in their execution. I started by making a simple sponge cake for the centre, using my preferred method. I use a tip from an old friend, and measure out my eggs first, and then match the weight of butter, sugar and flour to them. Once all the ingredients are combined, I personally like to add a splash of milk to the batter to loosen it, as I find this makes a moister sponge when cooked. 

Once the cake was cooked and cooled, I sliced it into one inch squares, and topped each square with a blob  of buttercream. (Real, made with butter buttercream for that matter!) 

Now came the tricky part, coating each fancy with fondant icing. The trick I discovered, by trial and error, is getting the consistency of the icing just so, that it is fluid enough to move the sponge in easily to get the coating, but stiff enough so as it sets on the sponge rather than run straight off when on the cooling rack. Trust me, the whole process is a sticky, gooey, kitchen annihilating mess, saved only by a Mary Berry tip I read about securing the sponge pieces on a fork when coating in the fondant. 

The end result, although not as neat and uniform as Mr Kipling's I admit, I was really pleased with. The sponge is moist and buttery, the icing not as thick, and therefore not as over-powering. All in all, not bad for a first attempt, and enough to rekindle my love affair with Fondant Fancies. I just need a cup of tea now to wash them down! :)

Lilac Fondant Fancies