Claire's 30th Birthday Cake

My oldest friend and best bud, Elinor, asked me if I would make her sister, Claire, a cake for her 30th Birthday.

My brief, to make a 'posh style victoria sponge'!

I used a recipe I saw on a Hairy Bikers programme, I think they visited the WI and they passed on the recipe. Its pretty simple.....

Weigh 3 eggs for a 6 inch cake
or
4 eggs for a 7inch cake
Use the same weight as the eggs for the...

Butter
Caster Sugar
Sifted Self Raising flour

then...
A pinch of baking powder
A few drops of Vanilla Extract

Cream the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat the eggs together and beat in a little at a time to the butter and sugar, adding a small amount of flour at the same time to prevent the mixture from curdling.
Add in the Vanilla Extract.
Fold in the rest of the flour and baking powder gently with a metal spoon. ( Be very gentle with it at this stage)
The mixture should be a soft dropping consistency, if it's a little stiff add a small amount dash of milk.
Divide the mixture into two lined and greased tins.
Bake in the centre of the oven 180c/gas 4 for approx 25-30 mins until golden and springy.
Remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

When the cake cools this is your chance to go to town. Most recipes suggest to sandwich the cake with jam and then sift icing or caster sugar over the top.

I filled the cake with raspberry jam, whipped cream, strawberries and raspberries. On the top I piped a little more whipped cream and then piled on the leftover strawberries and raspberries. I left a few of the stalks on strawberries to give it some extra colour. To finish it off i sifted some icing sugar over the top.





I hope this answered the brief, I was pretty happy with the outcome.

Happy Birthday Claire!

I've been practicing for the wedding cake again. This time I tried out a vanilla sponge cake using the recipe I used for the wedding cupcakes. Although the recipe is for cupcakes it does state that it can be baked as a normal cake too. Anyway it was a bit of a disappointment. The cake came out flat and looked stodgy and was like a brick! The only thing I can think that went wrong was that I used the wrong sized tin.

Although it wasn't a success I used it as a chance to practice my icing skills.



Apart from the cake looking like a pancake I'm pretty pleased with how the icing went. I made sure the icing was thicker and there seems to be less bumps this time round. I also did a double layer just to make sure the icing was thick enough and to compensate for not using marzipan.



I finished the cake off with a little ribbon just to get an idea of what it would look like dressed up.

My chief cake tester was on hand to sample the end product and apart from its brick like consistency it did taste good!