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Tag Archives: cake of the week
Cake of the Week: Swiss Roll – A revelation!
How have I gone 39 years without making a swiss roll? Even more to the point, how didn’t I know that they were so easy and so satisfying to make? Last Sunday we were having a family getogether as we do every year around the time of our Dad’s anniversary and Mum’s birthday. As usual, I had been mad busy during the run up to the day. I had every intention of producing a masterpiece but thought it would end up being a Mr Kipling/Costco special. On Sunday morning though, 4 of us did the Swimathon raising money for Marie Curie. Amazing how a swim can leave you feeling energised and utterly needing cake! I came home and thought Swiss Roll like you do. A quick nosy round at old cookbooks and I came up with a recipe of my own. I was wanting to go for HUGE while we were expecting 13 of us. Print Swiss Roll – A revelation! Rating: 51 Prep Time: 14 minutesCook Time: 11 minutesTotal Time: 25 minutes Yield: At least 8-10 generous pieces Ingredients3 large eggs 125g caster sugar Splash of vanilla extract 125g plain flour Plenty of strawberry jam Punnet of strawberries Tub more »
Cake of the Week – Extra Tall Rose Wedding Cake
Its been a while since we’ve had a Cake of the Week – The Costello clan are here, there and everywhere for a couple of weeks but I found these pics of one of the more unusual wedding cakes I have done and wanted to share. The Cake was 3 deep tiers high. Doing the first covering was a challenge but as soon as I relaxed and got it through to my head that any cracks or imperfections would be covered by the folds, I was on a roll. Looking at the pictures now, I reckon the cake could do with another band of roses around the outside – in fact, I’m trying to remember if I ended up actually adding some more roses after the shots were taken. What I do know, though, is that it took ages to make all the roses and used tons of ribbon to make the ribbon loops inbetween. The folds of icing down the side of the cake are definitely made easier if you have help from someone. One person can be adding a layer and the other checking if it is being put on straight. The ends should all finish in the more »
Ice Age Cake – Cake of the Week
I’ve got a confession – I’ve never seen Ice Age. In fact, there’s tons of children’s films I have never watched. I’ve never seen Shrek either but I can more or less repeat the script word for word thanks to my girls watching it on the iPad in the car behind my head. Anyway, back to the cake. A joint cake for my niece, Phoebe (4) and nephew, Milo (1). Phoebe more than makes up for me not watching Ice Age – she loves it. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t approaching triple figures of the amount of times she’s watched them. Phoebe and Milo have birthdays on 27th and 28th December so maybe consigned to a few more years of joint cakes. I will always stick by my promise never to get them joint birthday/Christmas presents though. We had a busy week for Cake of the Week entries last week. Sadly Jackie who has been so loyal about posting pictures of her cakes isn’t able to join in for the time being – Changes to Facebook mean that she cannot share her pics (or we can’t look at them) We’ll miss you Jackie and hope you still visit often. more »
The final Wedding Cake – Cake of the Week
Well, we are finally there. The final wedding cake went out this week. This was an order I have had since April (around the time I decided to put Aardvark Cakes to sleep for a while) I didn’t want to go out with a whimper and this was definitely the cake to go out on. A 5 tier monster with tons of sugar flowers. I knew that the lovely bride and her mum, (had never met the groom until the day they came to look at the cake, but he was lovely too) both wanted a showy cake but they were easy going about which order the flowers were in and the ratio of roses to lilies etc. There are no rules about how many flowers it takes to fill a cake like this, apart from that it needs far more than you first expect. I desperately didn’t want to get to the point of taping all the posies together though, to find I needed to make more so made plenty. There were 5 separate posies in all that are going to be spread out between various family relatives after the wedding. I really like the thought that the wedding more »
Red Gerbera Wedding Cake – Cake of the Week
I love this cake and everything about the process of making it. A friend of mine, Christine contacted me earlier in the year to say she was getting married and would I make her cake. Her only requests were sponge cake and red gerberas to match the fantastic red shoes she was getting married in. I have only recently perfected how I like to make gerberas. I use a massive daisy cutter and make most of them double depth. I roll a ball of flower paste and flatten it down, using a texture mat (or that stuff you can use to stop things slipping in the car – non slip matting?) to add texture to the middle part of the flower. If the flowers are not going to be eaten, I then add a sprinkling of glitter for added sparkle in the appropriate colour. I’ve had a bit of trouble with the ole Cake of the Week linky this week – There was an entry from Julie at Mama Owl who showed off her fabulous Moshi Monster cupcakes but it has mysteriously disappeared. So here’s the link to them …aren’t they great? Julie was 30 at the weekend so a more »
Tulip and Lily Wedding Cake – Cake of the Week
Its been a while but Cake of the Week is back. I delivered this the morning that we were going on holiday but was strangely not stressed at all making it. I had the pleasure of a really relaxed bride who genuinely wasn’t too concerned about what was on her cake. I found out that she was having tulips and arum lilies so went with ivory/creams all the way. I had never made tulips before so was really pleased with the final result. I’m hoping that Cake of the Week will be back regularly every Sunday now that I’ve stopped gadding about so would love to see your creations on a regular basis too. Just a bit of forward notice too though. From the first week in September, I will be hosting a feature called the ABC of Cakes. Every fortnight I will trawl the internet looking for cakes inspired by the letter of the fortnight. I will feature between 5-10 cakes that really stand out. If you have a cake with an A theme don’t forget to give me a shout – you never know it may be featured! Anyway, back to Cake of the Week – I know more »
Rose Wedding Cake – Cake of the Week & The Gallery
It is an absolute miracle that this cake made it to the reception, never mind that it was fit to eat. This cake was a wedding last Friday, yep, the rainiest day ever and I had to deliver it to a reception where the car park is nowhere near the door. There may have been some running and a Peppa Pig umbrella involved. We were actually guests at the wedding (and we were child free for most of it!!) – the dire weather didn’t spoil the day. It was lovely and relaxed. Laura and Mark are gorgeous and their 5 boys (!!! All 5 and under) looked and behaved beautifully. Unusually both tiers were fruit with a polystyrene middle section on the cake to insert the flowers into. This was definitely one of those cakes where you think you need so many flowers but actually have to treble it. It tooks hundreds!! My new favourite flower to make is a tulip type bud – they dust up wonderfully. I’ve attached a photo of the new Mr & Mrs Molyneux (pinched from Laura’s facebook page) along with their 3 eldest boys – the 6 month old twins were asleep at this more »
Numberjack 4 Cake – Cake of the Week
A bold coloured cake can either be a complete success or a complete disaster in my experience. I had major doubts about this cake before I made it. The shade of blue and the shape of the 4 had to be spot on to do the number 4 justice. There is nothing like a client under the age of 8 to tell you if the cake isn’t right either so added pressure there. Luke, the recipient of this cake is one of my favourite 4 year olds in the world – he lives right next door to us and I foresee many years of him popping in to play and just say Hi. My girls think he is great too and quite often pop into next door before entering our house, just to say hello to Luke. Apart from being a generally nice 4 year old, Luke is amazing with numbers. His favourite programme is Numberjacks and his 2nd birthday cake was Numberjack themed too. I just had to go for it when carving the cake – I first baked a 10″ square cake and used near enough all of it to make the 4 shape. I didn’t want to more »
Shades of Pink Wedding Cake – Cake of the Week
Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and messages following last week’s post about Aardvark Cakes. Happy to report that Cake of the Week will be continuing – at least for the time being. I have hundreds (no exaggeration ) of cake photos that I have never had time to post so I may get rid of some backlog. I have toyed with the idea about making cake of the week a bit more about other people’s cakes too – I know I really appreciate it when people publicise my work so would like to give a little back. The cake for this week is a pink creation – A wedding cake for the sister of a friend that I used to work with in my distant days as a Council employee. I hadn’t spent much time with Jacqueline (the bride) prior to sorting out her cake last year but found she was just as lovely as her sister, Michelle. The wedding was Friday so the cake got collected on Thursday – I hope they had a wonderful day. I had a new experience for this cake – making sugar flowers in public. By Wednesday night, the cake more »
