yummeelicious

Well 4 months after setting up this blog and many, many kilos of flour and sugar later I finally got my first cake request from someone who it wouldn’t be illegal to marry!

My first reaction to the request was excitement and incredulity which gave way to horror and panic and then back to excitement. It was a long four weeks in the run up to it. Being back to my “day job” makes baking more difficult as you will notice from the scarcity of posts of late. But having a real excuse to spend time planing and designing and spending hours browsing every bakery site I came across was just what I needed.

My brief was simple, a communion cake for a little girl who likes pink! Simple you would think! Well actually it was! The difficult bit was narrowing down all of the 100′s of options I had to one little cake.

The cake itself was a simple vanilla sponge which is my standard base for celebration cakes as it holds up well when loaded with fondant icing and decorations. The recipe is as follows:

• 240g softened unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 210g self-raising flour
• 90g plain flour

Simply cream the butter and sugar. I got some great advise with regards to this at a recent cupcake course I attended. You should cream them until you think you have done and then keep going. The longer you spend on this stage, the lighter your sponge will be. Then add the vanilla extract and the eggs one at a time, each with a spoonful of flour to stop the eggs splitting. Gently fold in the remainder of the flour (you don’t want to undo all the creaming) and transfer to your buttered tin. Bake at 170oC for 30-35mins.

This is one of those cakes I make on a regular basis and bar the odd forgetfulness regarding taking it out of the oven, it tends to turn out well everytime. There is however, always an exception and sods law this was the time it didn’t. The first cake sunk and I mean really sunk. It looked more like it was baked in a bundt tin! My ever so sensitive toddler said it was like a trampoline! So the above recipe was repeated exactly the same way but this time it worked out fine. Go figure!

Then came the fun part. The middle of the cake was filled with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam and then draped in white fondant icing.I decorated the top with the girls name and with alternating pink and white daisies made from fondant icing also. A ‘first holy communion’ ribbon purchased from cakecraftshop.co.uk finished off the cake.

This may seem a simple cake but for me it was a momentous occasion and hopefully the first of many.

Of course no party would be complete without a side of cupcakes!

Yummeelicious!