Birthday Cake

I've been dying to show you this recipe and photos for over a month now but getting my hands on them (from my elusive sister) proved harder than I initially thought.

But I got them today so I can finally share the recipes, tricks and tips on how I made my sister's eighteenth birthday cake.

Although I've made tons of cakes over the years - some for occasions, others just for fun - this was the first time I'd tackled royal icing. My Mum had asked for a similar version of my own eighteenth birthday cake (below) which was made by the glorious Paula at Costa Cakes so I embarked on some royal icing research. I also wanted to make a superbly moist yet crumbly vanilla sponge and fill it with jam and butter cream. My first port of call was Smitten Kitchen and all the information I could ever need was there. I'd recommend reading this post before starting on any layer cake and from there I used this recipe for the sponge layers and this recipe for the butter cream. I would recommend both recipes, they were both fairly simple and turned out brilliantly, even for a novice like me.

I bought two colours of royal icing, white for the base cover and fuchsia for the decoration. Rolling it out wasn't the easiest task with the tiny work space I have in my kitchen (think Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen and you're about there) and placing it over the cake was also a bit of a juggle. I made a couple of holes but the beauty of the decoration is that you can hide any mistakes. The decoration was simple, using these alphabet cutters for the letters and pink glitter to top it all off. I used a length of pink ribbon to hide the icing join.

The reason I even took on the challenge is because the quotes my Mum was getting for making a simple birthday cake were astronomical. I told her that my amateur attempt may look less professional but it's the thought and love that goes into it, right? Plus it'd be considerably cheaper - barely £15 to be precise. I even managed to pack it with me in hand luggage when I flew to Spain but that's a whole other story...

Anyway, it turned out not too bad for my first attempt. The white icing wasn't as smooth as I'd have liked but I was pleased with just about every other element. And I'm not even too scarred not to try it again.

Cake

It's a friend's birthday today so we decided to have some tea and birthday cake at mine yesterday. Of course, any opportunity to bake and I'm there so this was the perfect time to try a new chocolate cake recipe.

My new favourite recipe site - Smitten Kitchen - had the perfect recipe for a chocolate layer cake with chocolate frosting. I've tried a few recipes from the site now and have found they all work out well providing you follow the precise instructions and advice so it's come to be my go-to site when I need something special.

I used this recipe and made half the frosting (just enough to cover the cake) and used strawberry jam for the filling. The only downside is that the recipes are American so include ingredients you may not be able to buy in the UK. For example, the frosting asked for two tablespoons of corn syrup. I searched high and low for it but couldn't find it in the regular supermarkets. I know you can buy it from Amazon for about £4 but I didn't have the time nor the inclination to spend £4 on a bottle of something I didn't 100% need. I looked for substitute recommendations online but none were a great match although many people advised to use golden syrup. However, I thought this might make the frosting super sweet which is not what I was going for. In the end I decided to use about spoonful of honey purely for the consistency. It did make the mix sweet but I added about 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder which balanced it right out again. Next time though I might just skip the whole process because I'm not totally convinced it's necessary.

Anyway I simply decorated the cake with some basic icing sugar and water mix icing and piped "Happy Birthday Harriet" on top and piped icing balls a long the base of the cake. And I was fairly pleased with the overall result!

Making the frosting

Yes, there is a naked Barbie sat next to the cake.