Triathlon 30th Birthday Cake

I haven't been baking that much recently as I have been up to my eyeballs in radiators! It was the hubby's bithday while we were doing all the radiator replacements, but I did manage to knock him up a good old victoria sponge, with fresh cream, strawberries, and jam - yum!

A few weeks ago though, I was commissioned by one of his triathlon friends to make a surprise 30th birthday cake with a theme of triathlon.  So here was my plan of action:

The plan

I started with the figures as these would take the longest.  I used a fairly thick gauge wire, although in hindsight it was probably a bit too thick as it was soooo hard to bend.  Here is how I got on:

I used flower paste for the body of the runner but it was horrible to work with.  The rest of the models I just used regular sugarpaste and it worked just fine.

The cyclist taking shape

This was taken before his arms fell off!  I also needed to support the legs and feet with a wire ledge as they kept dropping off - but when the final cake was put together the glue had dried firm enough that I didn't need the extra support after all. Phew!

The runner needed extra support in the form of kebab sticks in his legs as the wire just wasn't cutting it.  I had also hoped he would look like he was actually still running, but I just couldn't get it to work.  Instead he is in his victory stance, standing with his arms up, having crossed the line!

The workspace

 I didn't have much time in the run up to when the cake needed to be done, so I bought in ready made cakes from Sweet Success in Nottingham.  Their cakes are lovely and so moist.  It's not the same as saying they are homemade, but when in a time crunch they are a great solution - and if I'm honest, they taste nicer than my bakes too!

This was the swimming cake and was a victoria sponge with jam and buttercream in the middle.  I wanted to emulate sand on the cake so I left an area without sugarpaste, but some soft buttercream on it, and then applied some crushed shortbread biscuits.  I actually had a piece of this cake at the party and the texture of the biscuit in the cake was just fab.

The swimmers in action.  I got fully briefed by my husband on where the arms should be, and was forced to watch lots of youtube videos about swimming technique.  And I still got it wrong apparently....

This was the runner, running along a trail path and over the finish line.  The candles were supposed to represent the banners along the finishing straight.

The runner from the back.  Note the number on his vest :) 

This was the cyclist on a smooth asphalt road - tri spoke on the front, disc on the rear.  My husband criticized me for the "relaxed geometry"of this one. But given how bloomin hard it is to model sugarpaste, I was jolly chuffed with this one!

Front view

The finished cake

With the birthday boy!

The swimmers were definitely most fun to do, and were actually pretty quick and easy to do.  The shortbread was fab too.

The runner and cyclist got a bit frustrating at times as they kept falling apart, but I was really really happy with the finished product.

To give an idea of costs, for 3 x 6" cakes, this cake cost approximately £55 in materials.  It's a lot more expensive to make cakes than most people think!

Minion Cake

Back to a bit of baking!

Back in April it was my husband’s birthday and whilst he was away on a cycling training weekend, I knocked him up a birthday cake – and not just any cake, a Minion cake :)

He is a massive kid at heart and absolutely adores Despicable Me.  He also loves dinosaurs so he thought he was getting a dinosaur cake – what a surprise he had in store!

I didn't have a recipe as such, I had just pinned a lot of pictures of minions and minion cakes on Pinterest, and hey off I went!

I wasn’t really sure of proportions so I kind of winged it as I went along, but I’m really really pleased with how it turned out.

In the end I made three 6” cakes.  One chocolate with chocolate buttercream, one lemon with lemon buttercream, and one vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling.

I cut the chocolate and vanilla cakes off level and rounded the top of the lemon one to make the top of the minions head.  I have no experience in sculpting cakes so I think this was a great gentle introduction.

I dowelled the bottom two tiers and put a cake card between the layers – the dowels probably weren’t necessary but no harm done.

I then stacked them up and covered the whole thing in buttercream.  The hardest part was getting the yellow layer on.  I admit I didn’t do it perfectly but it turned out ok.

For the rest of the minion I just kept going back to the pictures and building it up bit by bit.  Here was the step by step pictures:

I’ll admit, the cupcake I actually bought from Tesco. Shock horror!  I went to Tesco to get some ingredients for the cupcakes and saw it right there in the bakery aisle.  (This also was the weekend I did the Totoro wedding cake, and a lot of DIY, so please forgive my sins).

And the hubby loved it!

This was definitely my most favorite cake I have made to date.  I think because there was no pressure.  I hadn't had a brief so I could do what I wanted, and at the end of the day, no matter what it looked like, I knew he would have been chuffed just because it was home baked cake.

Totoro Wedding Cake Toppers

Here is the step by step picture guide to how I made the Totoro toppers.  They are from a Japanese anime movie : My Neighbour Totoro.

And on the cake at the venue:

Black Sheep Riggwelter Ale Fruit Wedding Cake

I recently completed my second wedding cake, this time for our good friends Toby and Emily.

This was the fruit cake that I blogged about about a year ago.  I practiced the cake again at Christmas as well.  Its a traditional Ale fruit cake (made with Black Sheep Riggwelter Ale).  I'm not a big fruit cake fan if I'm honest, but there is something about this cake that is really quite nice.  I tried it on some people at work as well, some of who also said they weren't big fruit cake fans and they lapped it up.  Maybe they were humouring me... I don't know... but either way I'm just saying, even if you think you don't like fruit cake, don't give up on it until you have tried an ale fruit cake!

I made a 6", 9" and 12" round cake.  It will serve at least 150.

The ingredients for the 9" cake is as follows:

275g sultanas

275g currants

275g raisins

150g chopped peel

315ml Riggwelter Black Sheep Ale

275g plain flour

70g ground almonds

1 1/4 tsp mixed spice

275g butter

275g dark brown muscovado sugar

5 large eggs

4 tsp treacle

3/4 tsp vanilla extract

150g glacé cherries

70g chopped almonds

1 1/4 lemons rind and juice

For the 6" cake I used 125ml of ale with the appropriate amount of other ingredients, and 625ml of ale in the 12" cake.

The general ingredients are the proportions taken from Lindy Smith's book.  I have replaced the brandy with a much larger amount of ale.  Rather than feeding the cake later, you put all the moisture in at the start.  That's my theory anyway...  It takes about 48hrs for all the fruit to soak up the ale so make sure you leave enough time for this.

I let the cakes mature untouched for 2 months - I'm not how much longer I would leave them, as I have yet to investigate the effects.  2 months give a nicely flavoured moist cake though so I'm happy with that.  I tried eating one sample after 1 week but it was a bit "crumby".

The cakes were about 3 inches deep once baked, but to really get the proportions right, I built up each cake with two cake drums.  I then marzipanned the cakes and covered with ivory sugarpaste.

Mock up of proportions 

Filling in holes with marzipan

Marzipanning

Sugarpaste and stacked

The decoration was the "fun" bit!  I was given a photo of what the couple wanted, and it was quite involved!  I'm not really sure how to describe them, I think they were like cotton trees...?  Here is the step by step process:

Twisting the wires together.  Doing slightly different lengths for variation.

Cutting the branches off at different heights.

Making the flowers

Putting them together was time consuming, plus a lot of edible glue!  The tricky bit was sticking them to the cake!  I glued the back of each tree and pressed it lightly into the sugarpaste; however it takes some time for the glue to set, so until they had set, any slight movement or knock sent them all tumbling!  Dominos spring to mind!  Once I had completed a tier I secured them with two pieces of string and that seemed to do the trick. 

The final step was adding some leaves at the bottom.  I just used a small leaf plunger cutter which also embossed veins on the leaf.

I also made the toppers, more details on that in another post.

It was terrifying driving the cake up through the peak district already assembled, but it was absolutely fine - speed bumps, country roads and all!

The wedding day itself was beautiful - such a lovely couple and such a lovely day :)