Making an iced birthday cake

[jobey]

I have just had a family member ask me how i made my latest cake so thought i would copy it over here in case it helps anyone. I am by no means an expert and have much to learn so if anyone has any other tips to add i thought it would be a nice place to share

I bake a Madeira cake as the birthday cake, super easy, you can't get it wrong. You could also add other flavourings if you wanted to such as lemon zest.

The recipe i use is for an 8" Birthday cake:

350g Plain flour
1 1/2tsp Baking powder
275g Caster Sugar
275g Soft Marg (i use Stork)
5 Eggs
3 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to Gas mark 3/140 deg on a fan oven.

Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.

Add all the other ingredients and mix. I usually soften the marg in the microwave for a few seconds and pre-mix the eggs in a cup before adding them.

Place in a prepared cake tin (grease and dust with flour) and pop into the middle of the oven. Bake for approx 1 hour 10 mins, i check it with a skewer after about an hour and 5 to keep a close eye so it's not overcooked. Skewer needs to come out clean.

Leave it to cool for 5 mins when it comes out of the oven, it will shrink slightly away from the tin and come out easier. Cool on a wire rack.

To level the cake try this, worked a charm for me the other day! You can also use this technique to cut the cake in half ready to fill it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuFsKfOfDDE

I use this recipe for frosting:
http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Buttercream-Icing

For "shortening", i bought something called Trex, you can get it from Asda. I doubled up the recipe as i wanted to use it between the layers aswell and found that i only needed half the amount of icing sugar given in the recipe.
So, i used 1 pack of butter, 250g Trex and 4 cups of icing sugar, 2tsp homemade vanilla extract and omitted the milk. I had absolutely loads left over though so you should find that you don't need to double up like i did. It's easier if you soften the butter in the microwave first, i wouldn't use straight from the fridge, it needs to be soft. When you add the icing sugar i'd recommend adding half and tasting it like i did.




When the frosting is done and the cake is totally cold, frost inbetween the layers and stick together, then do a crumb coat using an angled spatula and put the cake in the fridge for about half an hour or until that layer has set. Then coat again with a full layer of frosting to get it nice and level. This hides a multitude of sins!




In the past i have used jam and cream in the middle (double cream whipped and a teaspoon or so of icing sugar to sweeten). You could do that instead if you wanted to. I would do a barrier of frosting around the edge of the cake first to stop the jam coming out and mixing with your frosting on the outer surface, if that makes sense?

These videos may help:

How to fill and Torte your cake

How to Crumb coat your cake

How to Ice your cake

Use cornflour to dust your work surface, it works better than icing sugar, though you can use that if you haven't got cornflour.
Make sure your Fondant icing is room temp/warm, it's much easier to work with. Take it out of the pack and knead it till it's nice and soft.
Roll out your fondant icing. I found some Sugarpaste icing which is SO much easier to work with if you can find a local cake shop that stocks it. It's also easier to buy pre-coloured. If you need to colour your own fondant you need to buy sugar paste colours, it comes in little pots. You can use liquid colours in bottles but i have never had much luck using them as it makes the fondant sticky.

I use a polypropelene (white plastic) rolling pin for my icing, it keeps the icing smooth looking. You can use a wooden one though if that's what you have. Cover it in clingfilm when rolling. To smooth out any imperfections, i have a PME smoother but if you don't have one you can wrap a bit of icing in some clingfilm and smooth that over the surface. It's easier to work on any imperfections in the icing when it's flat than when it's on the cake.
Also, keep moving the icing as you roll it to prevent it sticking to the surface.

I'm building up a collection of gadgets and gismo's but it's expensive to buy all in one go so have adapted along the way!



For the little butterflies, you can either buy them pre-made or make them yourself. Very very easy to do yourself. You can get the cutters on Ebay for about £3.99. Buy some white fondant, take a small handful and use a skewer to transfer some colour fromthe pot to the icing. You only need a tiny bit. Knead until the colour is even (watch the colour going onto your hands!).
Then literally stamp the butterfly shapes and press down to imprint the pattern.
Set some skewers on the underside of a plate and place the butterflies upside down so that they don't dry flat. You can make the butterflies in advance and when they're dry pop in an airtight container.
To stick them to the cake dip your little finger in a pot of water and moisten the back of the butterfly and stick to cake, hold for a couple of seconds. I also added a bit of lustre glitter to the butterflies once they were on the cake.



Finished cake!





Please add your tips!!

[Inks]

Thanks for this Jobey, it's my little man's 4th birthday next week and I might give this a go (well, not butterflies!)

Your cake looks great - v talented!

[Sam]

I was wondering how to get icing so smooth, thanks!

[Oana]

That's gorgeous, love the butterflies too

[Sadie]

Looks lovely :).

[Samba]

WOW Jobey this is a brilliant post, thank you

[jobey]

You're welcome!

[Clementine]

Thanks for sharing, it looks great! Love that little hand in the shot of the butterflies - did you have helpers?

[jobey]

Thanks for sharing, it looks great! Love that little hand in the shot of the butterflies - did you have helpers?

Oh yeah, there are always little helpers around wanting to see what i'm doing

[Jenevieve]

Great tutorial - will bookmark it for future use.

When I've tried this before I always find rolling out the icing really difficult. It sticks like mad no matter how much icing sugar I put down.

I read somewhere that you should use white fat rather than icing sugar so I tried that and it was even worse. Do you think it's because I'm rolling out on my wooden kitchen table?