yummeelicious

My little man turned 3 recently and is going through his pirate phase. By this I mean he ends his sentences with ARRRR! when he is pretending to fight with you! He thinks it’s scary, I just think it’s cute

Anyway for his birthday we went with a pirate theme with birthday banners, eye patches and even a pirate ship water table present courtesy of his Nanny (thanks mam!). So of course, the cake had to be a pirate too.

The cake itself was a simple 9in round sponge with buttercream and jam filling. The cake was then covered in pale pink buttercream icing.

Decoration ingredients

• Ready to roll icing
• Red food paste
• Blue food paste

Colour some ready to roll icing red, and roll out until a little larger than half the cake top. Cut a straight edge with a knife. Drape the icing over the cake so that the cut edge covers one-third of the cake top in a diagonal line, draping downwards on the right side of the cake on the cake board and a few pleats to resemble a bandana.

Re-knead the excess red colouring and roll out all the trimmings. Cut out a mouth shape and 2 very thin strips for teh ends of the mouth and press in place on the cake.

Knead and roll out the white icing. Cut out small rounds using an upturned end of a piping tube and press these at intervals on the bandana, sticking them with some water. Roll a small white icing ball, then flatten, shape into an oval eye and press on to the pirates face. Add a small black round on top for the eyeball.

Colour and knead some blue icing. Cut out more spots for the bandana.

Knead and roll out the black icing. Cut out a semi-circle for an eyepatch. Shape the remaining black icing into a thin rope and press above the eyepatch, across the face.

The remainder of the black icing can be cut out in the shape of the a beard and placed on the side of the cake under the mouth.

The perfect pirate! Yummeelicious!!

For me, a wedding cake is the most important cake a person can be asked to bake. This is one of those days that the bride and groom (ok, mainly the bride) will look back upon with fondness and romantic thoughts and also remember the little niggles that just weren’t quite what she had in mind when she was planning like crazy for the months before hand.

Recently I had the pleasure and the pressure of making a wedding cake for a friend. In fairness to her, her brief was simple: enough fruit cake to feed approximately 100 guests. She wanted simple white fondant icing, decorated with ribbon. This sounded too easy! How could a wedding cake be so simple and straight forward?? Well the truth is that it cant be. No matter how easy it sounds, it is still someone’s wedding cake, a center piece at a wedding reception that all the guests will see. So no pressure!!!

Once the request for fruit cake was made, there was only one choice, my mammy’s recipe from her sacred book she has promised to leave me in her will!! This recipe has been tried and tested for Christmas cakes for as far back as I can remember so it was a recipe I trusted. The only proviso was, I had never made it! Only eaten it!

Anyway here is the recipe (based on the number of guests I went with 2 tiers, 8in and 10in)

8in                   10in

Currants                               10oz                  1lb

Sultanas                                7oz                    11oz

Raisins                                  4oz                    6oz

Glace Cherries                     2.5oz                 4oz

Almonds (chopped)            2.5oz                 4oz

Mixed cut peel                     2.5oz                  4oz

Grated lemon rind              1                           2

Brandy (optional)               2tbsp                 3tbsp

Plain flour                            7oz                     11oz

Mixed spice                         1tsp                     1.5tsp

Nutmeg                                0.5tsp                 0.75tsp

Ground almonds                2oz                      3oz

Margarine (melted)           6oz                       10oz

Soft brown sugar               6oz                       10oz

Black treacle                       1tbsp                     1.5tbsp

Eggs (large)                         4                             6

Despite the seemingly never ending list of ingredients, the process is fairly simple: Put all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix for 2-4 minutes until all the ingredients are fully combined. It is easier to combine all the dry ingredients first before adding the wet so as to ensure that the ingredients are evenly distributed through-out the cake.

Place the mixture into a greaseproof lined baking tin which also has two layer of brown paper on the outside of the tin. I may write an entire post on how tricky this can be to the untrained person

Place the lined and covered baking tin on a newspaper in a cool oven at approx 130oC for 2.5 to 3 hours. The time taken is oven dependent as usual.

The cakes were made a number of weeks in advance and wrapped in 2 layers of parchment and then 2 layers of foil to ensure they matured but stayed fresh.

Marzipan

Now I am not a marzipan fan, to be honest I really don’t like the stuff but I have to admit that homemade marzipan is actually edible.

Again, it is one of those things you assume to be ridiculously difficult to make but in actual fact is simple:

Ingredients

8oz Ground almonds

4oz Icing sugar

4oz Caster sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 drops almond essence

1 egg (beaten)

1. Mix almonds, icing sugar and castor sugar

2. Add lemon juice, almond essence and enough beaten egg to mae a fairly dry paste.

3. Turn out and kneed until smooth.

All you need to do then is coat the cake with apricot jam and cover in the rolled out marzipan at the desired thickness. Simple!

Fondant
The request was for a simple white cake so there was no room for error with the icing. I considered homemade fondant but in the end I settled on pre-made ready to roll to ensure it was as white as possible. Again this was rolled out the desired thickness and placed on top of the marzipan layer covering the cake board also to give a seamless finish.

A colourful ribbon of the brides choosing was placed on the cake to complete the look.

Yummeelicious!!