I like cake... so I decided to make one for my boy's 2nd Birthday
I was having a play with a tester the week before and made a chocolate and vanilla marble cake which turned out ok, but was a bit dry
So after much investigation into the how to's I decided on making him a George pig cake (I was going to go for a Thomas the tank engine one, but decided it'd be too difficult).
Given that the cake was primarily for a Toddlers party I didnt want to make anything too sugary/filled with E numbers, so I went for a good old fashioned Victoria Sponge cake (mmmmmm) by following the recipe here.
However to make things more difficult for myself for some reason, I decided I wanted to make the fondant to go ontop of the cake as well - I bought some roll on stuff last year which was ok, but I wanted to go one step further this time.
To make the cake I needed:
2x 8" diameter cake tins (I went for 2x 8.5" square tins and 2x 7.5" round tins as I was making 2 cakes - We'll come to that later)
175g Self Raising Flour
1x rounded Teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
3x Large eggs (although I actually used medium and it was fine)
175g Caster sugar
175g of butter (Stork in this case)
1x Jar strawberry Jam
Making the cakes themselves was fairly standard stuff (shamelessly stolen from the link above):
- Grease the cake tins using a bit of butter - I used quite a bit as I had a bit of a burnt edge on my tester the other day. I then used baking paper on the bottom of the tin and greased that up a bit too.
- Then I started off by sifting the self-raising flour and a rounded teaspoon of baking powder into a very large mixing bowl - I held the sieve up away from the bowl a bit (4" or so) to let the flour air as it went down.
- Break 3 large eggs into the flour and add the caster sugar and butter - make sure the butter is really soft (i.e. you can push a knife sideways onto it and leave a large mark). Whisk it all together then add half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and whisk again. Keep whisking for a minute or so until its all really mixed in and nice and gooey (technical term).. I used a hand whisk for the first cake and an electric one for the 2nd, and to be honest, as long as you mix it well it doesnt make a difference which you use other than one of them making your arm want to fall off.
- You should now have a mixture that drops pretty easily off the spoon when you give it a tap on the edge of the bowl. If its a bit thick, add 1-2 teaspoons of tap water and mix again.
- Divide the sponge mixture equally between the prepared tins and level out the surface with a palette knife/Spatula.
- Bung them in the oven at 170°C for 30-35 minutes (I have a fan assisted oven, so cut the temp to 160 and they took around 30 mins).
- Test this after 30 mins by pressing the top of the cake lightly - it should spring back up fairly quickly - if not, put it back in for another 3-5 mins and try again.
- Once they are done, take them out of the oven and let them cool for a few mins. When you can lift the cake tin take the cake out and stick it somewhere to cool - I used a normal grill for this so the air gets underneath too. Now leave them to cool completely before doing anything else.
I repeated the process for the smaller cake in exactly the same way so that I had 1x square cake and 1x round cake.
At this point I was thinking about the filling, so despite my previous mention of wanting to minimise sugar, I went for a buttercream filling with strawberry jam.
Using the recipe from here I made the buttercream icing using:
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
600g icing sugar
2 tablespoons Semi-skimmed milk
This is an easy one as to be honest, chuck the butter and vanilla in a bowl and mix well, then add the sugar slowly (1/4 at a time) and mix it well again until all the sugar is in, then chuck the milk in and mix again.
One thing to note however is that when you start to add the sugar, use a hand whisk.. Electric ones create something of an icing sugar explosion. Hmm. Wont be doing that one again.
Once its all mixed, chuck it in the fridge/storage until the cakes are completely cooled and lick the whisk.. you've earned it. go on.. its ok.. no ones watching... Ahem.
Ok, so cakes are cooled nicely, now to put them together.
Take the bottom half of the cake and cover it in either Jam or the buttercream icing (upto you, but I went with Jam on the bottom half), not too thickly though as it will just spill out the edges and make the top slip off - I had maybe 2 thin layers - you might need to cut the top of the cake slightly to make it level.
Then take the top half of the cake and put the jam/buttercream on the bottom of that - the buttercream can be a bit thicker. Once its on there, stick the top half ontop of the bottom half and voila a cake. hopefully.
I then used the rest of the buttercream to cover the cakes to allow the fondant to have a smooth surface and something to stick to:
Righteo, on with the fondant then. I like the internet when it comes to recipes as they are everywhere, so I decided to make the fondant using the recipe here. This one makes enough to cover 2x 10" cakes, so it was plenty for me.
You need the following (forgive the random measurements, it an american site - for cup sizes I used a normal sized coffee mug):
1x Tablespoon of unflavored gelatin - I found a Dr Oetker gelatin in the shops that came in sachets - this was just about right.
1/4 cup of cold water
1x teaspoon of almond extract
1/2 cup of liquid glucose syrup (If a glucose is not available, you can substitute it with a sugar syrup made with 1-1/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water, boiled together until syrupy)
1x Tablespoon of glycerin
1Kg Icing sugar
1/2 tsp of white vegetable shortening (its butter... why measure butter with a spoon... the measurement iss irrelevant really anyway as I used it on my hands to stop stuff sticking)
I also used several youtube videos of people making fondant to measure up how I was doing as I went along - this one is a good one to see how to start kneading the fondant and how sticky it is to start. (ignore the first half of the vid though, you dont need to watch it till she gets the bowl out the microwave)
- Sprinkle the gelatin over cold water in a small bowl and let it rest for 2 minutes to soften
- Place the bowl in a microwave for 30 seconds on High, until the gelatin dissolves
- Add the Almond extract
- Add the glucose and the glycerin and stir until the mixture is smooth and clear (if the mixture is not turning smooth and clear, microwave it for an additional 15 to 20 seconds on high and stir again)
- Sift 680g of the icing sugar into a large bowl
- Make a hole in the sugar and pour the liquid mixture to it
- Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes sticky
- Sift some of the remaining sugar onto a smooth work surface and add as much of the remaining sugar as the mixture will take
- Rub some butter into your hands and Knead the fondant, adding a more sugar where necessary to help it stick together. Eventually it will form a smooth, pliable mass (although this will take a bit of time)..
- if you are going to keep the fondant for a day or two before using it, Wrap the fondant in plastic wrap and place it in a tightly sealed container to prevent it from drying out
Next.
Colouring the fondant:
Not too difficult this bit, but you need to take it slowly as its easy to put colour in, but you can't take it out if its gone too dark.
I used colouring I picked up from the shops - no E numbers thankfully.
The basic principle to get the fondant into a condition that is soft and easily manipulated - i.e. you're able to knead it easily.
Sprinkle a little icing sugar on a surface to stop it sticking and knead it a little until you can flatten it.
Now get a toothpic and dip it in the colouring then score the fondant with it - repeat the process till you have 4-5 lines of colour in there and then knead the fondant - you might need to repeat the process a few times till you get the right colour, but its best to take your time with this bit.
If the colour still isnt coming through make a little trough in the fondant and pour some colouring in, then knead again - be warned that this will make it very sticky again but will do a really good job of mixing in the colour, so make sure you have icing sugar on hand to help firm it up again (mix the colour in completely first though as the sugar dilutes the colour if mixed together). Once its the colour you want, you're A and away. I had to make a large blue, large pink, small black, small green and small uncoloured fondant ball, so I did this a few times.
These went in the fridge while I got the rest of the cake ready.
So, I took the cakes out of the fridge where they had been residing and started about shaping them. I drew a rough outline of George Pigs head on baking paper and cut it out - this template was sized then used to shape the square cake. I also cut a portion out of the round cake to allow the two to sit together nicely:
I used the offcuts of cake to make the ears then got on with putting the fondant on.
I got the fondant out of the fridge and had to microwave it for 10secs to soften it up.. This dried it up slightly, so I rubbed a little butter in it to help soften it again and mould the cracks together (when it comes to fondant sugar dries it, butter makes it sticky).
I kneaded the fondant till it was soft enough to use and began rolling it:
In true lazy guy fashion I was following this video when rolling it as it is very good and clear on what to do.
Once I had the fondant to the right size/thickness I scooped it up and put it over the cake and cut it to size/shape. Repeat the process for the head and it gave me this:
Now I was just left with rolling/cutting the other smaller fondants to make the details to put on. Fortunately it all seemed to work out really well and ended up like this:
So there we go, all in all it took something like 10 hours and cost more than it would to have just bought a cake, but hey, it was fun!
Hope you guys like it
I was having a play with a tester the week before and made a chocolate and vanilla marble cake which turned out ok, but was a bit dry
So after much investigation into the how to's I decided on making him a George pig cake (I was going to go for a Thomas the tank engine one, but decided it'd be too difficult).
Given that the cake was primarily for a Toddlers party I didnt want to make anything too sugary/filled with E numbers, so I went for a good old fashioned Victoria Sponge cake (mmmmmm) by following the recipe here.
However to make things more difficult for myself for some reason, I decided I wanted to make the fondant to go ontop of the cake as well - I bought some roll on stuff last year which was ok, but I wanted to go one step further this time.
To make the cake I needed:
2x 8" diameter cake tins (I went for 2x 8.5" square tins and 2x 7.5" round tins as I was making 2 cakes - We'll come to that later)
175g Self Raising Flour
1x rounded Teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
3x Large eggs (although I actually used medium and it was fine)
175g Caster sugar
175g of butter (Stork in this case)
1x Jar strawberry Jam
Making the cakes themselves was fairly standard stuff (shamelessly stolen from the link above):
- Grease the cake tins using a bit of butter - I used quite a bit as I had a bit of a burnt edge on my tester the other day. I then used baking paper on the bottom of the tin and greased that up a bit too.
- Then I started off by sifting the self-raising flour and a rounded teaspoon of baking powder into a very large mixing bowl - I held the sieve up away from the bowl a bit (4" or so) to let the flour air as it went down.
- Break 3 large eggs into the flour and add the caster sugar and butter - make sure the butter is really soft (i.e. you can push a knife sideways onto it and leave a large mark). Whisk it all together then add half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and whisk again. Keep whisking for a minute or so until its all really mixed in and nice and gooey (technical term).. I used a hand whisk for the first cake and an electric one for the 2nd, and to be honest, as long as you mix it well it doesnt make a difference which you use other than one of them making your arm want to fall off.
- You should now have a mixture that drops pretty easily off the spoon when you give it a tap on the edge of the bowl. If its a bit thick, add 1-2 teaspoons of tap water and mix again.
- Divide the sponge mixture equally between the prepared tins and level out the surface with a palette knife/Spatula.
- Bung them in the oven at 170°C for 30-35 minutes (I have a fan assisted oven, so cut the temp to 160 and they took around 30 mins).
- Test this after 30 mins by pressing the top of the cake lightly - it should spring back up fairly quickly - if not, put it back in for another 3-5 mins and try again.
- Once they are done, take them out of the oven and let them cool for a few mins. When you can lift the cake tin take the cake out and stick it somewhere to cool - I used a normal grill for this so the air gets underneath too. Now leave them to cool completely before doing anything else.
I repeated the process for the smaller cake in exactly the same way so that I had 1x square cake and 1x round cake.
At this point I was thinking about the filling, so despite my previous mention of wanting to minimise sugar, I went for a buttercream filling with strawberry jam.
Using the recipe from here I made the buttercream icing using:
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
600g icing sugar
2 tablespoons Semi-skimmed milk
This is an easy one as to be honest, chuck the butter and vanilla in a bowl and mix well, then add the sugar slowly (1/4 at a time) and mix it well again until all the sugar is in, then chuck the milk in and mix again.
One thing to note however is that when you start to add the sugar, use a hand whisk.. Electric ones create something of an icing sugar explosion. Hmm. Wont be doing that one again.
Once its all mixed, chuck it in the fridge/storage until the cakes are completely cooled and lick the whisk.. you've earned it. go on.. its ok.. no ones watching... Ahem.
Ok, so cakes are cooled nicely, now to put them together.
Take the bottom half of the cake and cover it in either Jam or the buttercream icing (upto you, but I went with Jam on the bottom half), not too thickly though as it will just spill out the edges and make the top slip off - I had maybe 2 thin layers - you might need to cut the top of the cake slightly to make it level.
Then take the top half of the cake and put the jam/buttercream on the bottom of that - the buttercream can be a bit thicker. Once its on there, stick the top half ontop of the bottom half and voila a cake. hopefully.
I then used the rest of the buttercream to cover the cakes to allow the fondant to have a smooth surface and something to stick to:
Righteo, on with the fondant then. I like the internet when it comes to recipes as they are everywhere, so I decided to make the fondant using the recipe here. This one makes enough to cover 2x 10" cakes, so it was plenty for me.
You need the following (forgive the random measurements, it an american site - for cup sizes I used a normal sized coffee mug):
1x Tablespoon of unflavored gelatin - I found a Dr Oetker gelatin in the shops that came in sachets - this was just about right.
1/4 cup of cold water
1x teaspoon of almond extract
1/2 cup of liquid glucose syrup (If a glucose is not available, you can substitute it with a sugar syrup made with 1-1/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water, boiled together until syrupy)
1x Tablespoon of glycerin
1Kg Icing sugar
1/2 tsp of white vegetable shortening (its butter... why measure butter with a spoon... the measurement iss irrelevant really anyway as I used it on my hands to stop stuff sticking)
I also used several youtube videos of people making fondant to measure up how I was doing as I went along - this one is a good one to see how to start kneading the fondant and how sticky it is to start. (ignore the first half of the vid though, you dont need to watch it till she gets the bowl out the microwave)
- Sprinkle the gelatin over cold water in a small bowl and let it rest for 2 minutes to soften
- Place the bowl in a microwave for 30 seconds on High, until the gelatin dissolves
- Add the Almond extract
- Add the glucose and the glycerin and stir until the mixture is smooth and clear (if the mixture is not turning smooth and clear, microwave it for an additional 15 to 20 seconds on high and stir again)
- Sift 680g of the icing sugar into a large bowl
- Make a hole in the sugar and pour the liquid mixture to it
- Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes sticky
- Sift some of the remaining sugar onto a smooth work surface and add as much of the remaining sugar as the mixture will take
- Rub some butter into your hands and Knead the fondant, adding a more sugar where necessary to help it stick together. Eventually it will form a smooth, pliable mass (although this will take a bit of time)..
- if you are going to keep the fondant for a day or two before using it, Wrap the fondant in plastic wrap and place it in a tightly sealed container to prevent it from drying out
Next.
Colouring the fondant:
Not too difficult this bit, but you need to take it slowly as its easy to put colour in, but you can't take it out if its gone too dark.
I used colouring I picked up from the shops - no E numbers thankfully.
The basic principle to get the fondant into a condition that is soft and easily manipulated - i.e. you're able to knead it easily.
Sprinkle a little icing sugar on a surface to stop it sticking and knead it a little until you can flatten it.
Now get a toothpic and dip it in the colouring then score the fondant with it - repeat the process till you have 4-5 lines of colour in there and then knead the fondant - you might need to repeat the process a few times till you get the right colour, but its best to take your time with this bit.
If the colour still isnt coming through make a little trough in the fondant and pour some colouring in, then knead again - be warned that this will make it very sticky again but will do a really good job of mixing in the colour, so make sure you have icing sugar on hand to help firm it up again (mix the colour in completely first though as the sugar dilutes the colour if mixed together). Once its the colour you want, you're A and away. I had to make a large blue, large pink, small black, small green and small uncoloured fondant ball, so I did this a few times.
These went in the fridge while I got the rest of the cake ready.
So, I took the cakes out of the fridge where they had been residing and started about shaping them. I drew a rough outline of George Pigs head on baking paper and cut it out - this template was sized then used to shape the square cake. I also cut a portion out of the round cake to allow the two to sit together nicely:
I used the offcuts of cake to make the ears then got on with putting the fondant on.
I got the fondant out of the fridge and had to microwave it for 10secs to soften it up.. This dried it up slightly, so I rubbed a little butter in it to help soften it again and mould the cracks together (when it comes to fondant sugar dries it, butter makes it sticky).
I kneaded the fondant till it was soft enough to use and began rolling it:
In true lazy guy fashion I was following this video when rolling it as it is very good and clear on what to do.
Once I had the fondant to the right size/thickness I scooped it up and put it over the cake and cut it to size/shape. Repeat the process for the head and it gave me this:
Now I was just left with rolling/cutting the other smaller fondants to make the details to put on. Fortunately it all seemed to work out really well and ended up like this:
So there we go, all in all it took something like 10 hours and cost more than it would to have just bought a cake, but hey, it was fun!
Hope you guys like it
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