Purple Ombre Cake

So today my mum's work hosted a Coffee Morning in support of Macmillan Cancer Support, and I was asked if I would donate a cake to their bake off, the answer was of course yes! I do love a cheeky charity bake off.

After I'd been named and shamed in their company email saying I could outbake them all (which I'm not sure were my words!) I knew the pressure was then on to make something special, and I had just the cake. I've been wanting to make an ombre cake for a while now, and while I hadn't practiced it before I figured I'd just wing it, my usual approach!

So, my decision was made, and the colour? Purple. I decided to make 4 layers from plan to bright purple, each layer was made up of a 5 egg mix.

250g butter
250g sugar
5 eggs
250 flour
2 tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla sugar

First I creamed the butter and sugar and added half of the flour, baking powder, 2 of the eggs and mixed and then added the remainder of the ingredients, mixed and baked for about 40-60 minutes with two tins (yes my actual cake tins, I'll always bake in them!) in the oven at the same time. I made the first layer with no colour and the second I added just a drop of Sugarflaire colouring paste Grape Violet to make it only slightly lilac.

The next batch I doubled the colour and kind of went to town on the last batch, I always worry coloured sponge will look a little dull and wasn't sure how it'd turn out...well...you can see for yourself! Once cool I leveled the cakes to create for equal flat layers.

 

Next I had to ice it with buttercream, I made a ridiculous amount! To the point where I had to consult Twitter to see if I could freeze it - yes I could - phew! First I applied a crumb coat of a very pale lilac and then made a mammoth batch to split into three. The first batch I kept pale like the crumb boat and the next two I tried to be braver with to really make them bright and vibrant, the colour can go really strong so don't be afraid to use it!

I decided to make three rows of roses with buttercream, the darker at the bottom and lightest at the top and the base of the top filled with roses. For the roses I used the Wilton 1M nozzle, as normal - it is my favourite as you know. It's important to keep all of the columns of roses in a line for a neat look...it has to be neat! To fill all of the little gaps I just piped stars into them, and t hey all happened to be in the same lines so it all matched too.

 

  

In hindsight I should have bought a bigger cake board, I did it all a bit last minute so I had to get it from Tesco and it just about fit! I'm normally very critical of my cakes but I have to say I was really proud of this one! I was dying to see what it looked like inside but had to wait until my mum could send me a photo after it had been cut.

sorry I know there's a lot of of pictures to go through!

The coffee morning was a great success and they raised over £140 which is brilliant. I came runner up, considering I don't actually work at that company I thought that was pretty good going, and I got to make a proper show stopper cake which I haven't done in ages.

 

Anyway, for those too scared try an ombre cake...be not afraid! Bake, bake it now!

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A Very Sexy Cupcake...

I do love birthdays in my office, there's always an excuse to make cake! This cake in particular I was very excited about...and I'm sure you can guess why :D

This giant cupcake was for a lady in my office and after some researching I soon found out what to put on it. I got very clear instructions, David Beck and Matthew McConaughey had to be the main feature....yay! I have to say trawling the internet for these half naked (tried fully naked...no luck!) men really wasn't punishing work, might have been my favourite project so far.

I decided that the rice paper route would be the best to go down for this cake, and have them literally coming out of the cake in a very 'Magic Mike' stripper fashion, you can never have too much of that on a cake right?

So the cake in question, was chocolate - who doesn't like chocolate cake for their birthday? The 'case' part was covered in ivory fondant and the middle and 'top' were covered and piped with lilac vanilla buttercream (dyed with grape violet sugarflair colouring paste). For the front of the cake I cut out her name 'KIM' in fondant and the letters in gold Dr.Oetker edible spray, I also cut out some stars for the ultimate stripper effect.

Becks and McConaughey got pride of place above her name and the whole cake got a generous dusting of gold edible cake glitter and after being tied up with a gold bow it was ready to be devoured! Luckily the birthday girl loved it and I am informed that the pair have been kept and have yet to be eaten, just oggled for now :)

And as you can see we take great delight in decorating desks...and computer desktops :)

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Another Birthday Present!

Ok just had to share with you all my latest birthday present! This was on the top of my birthday wish list and I really had no idea I was getting it. Another one of my best friends Natalie bought this for me and I really didn't know until I saw the box said John Lewis on it.

It's by Mason Cash and in a beautiful lavender colour. I have a bit of a mixing bowl fetish and even nearly bought one in Brighton at the weekend so I'm glad I didn't. This one is a bit smaller than my red one which is good at that one is huge and sometimes you do need a more 'normal' sized one.

I'm doing a post for BakingMad tomorrow so I'll put up some action shots with this beautiful bowl in use. She also got me some really cute oven mitts as all I've really done is burn myself lately! So hopefully this will stop now, and they have cupcakes on - yay :)....God I'm such a girl! Pin It Now!

Lavender And White Two Tier Birthday Cake

It was one of my best friends birthdays recently, and as I couldn't be there for her birthday I decided to whip her up a little birthday cake.

I had some new cake decorating gizmos from a great cake decorating shop in Oslo when I was visiting called 'Cacas'. It was my haven, an official supplier of Wilton it was filled with everything you could ever want to decorate with, it's just a shame it all cost a fortune!

I usually do the big pink cakes, so I thought I would do her something different, a victoria sponge cake, made up of two layers, one being pink and the other lilac so there was a little surprise when you cut into it.

I covered it in lavender coloured fondant and decorated it in plain white for a classic look. For the decorations I used this Wilton mould where all you had to do is push the fondant into the moulds and lift them out, the trick to this is to dust it in icing sugar first so it will come out clean.

This mould came with ribbon and button designs which is the type I use the most so it's worth the crazy import rate.

The lettering on the front spells 'cheeky', this may seem odd, but it's kind of a catchphrase around here, and they named their new place 'cheeky towers' so it fit quite well. I also piped peals around the seam of the bottom tier to top it off and complete the look.

For an added extra bit of detail I used the brownie stencils I also bought in Cacas, and spread icing over them, lifted of the stencil and was left with a pretty pattern that took no time but looked cute and tied in the colours. I love this cake because it's sleek looking, really pretty colours and was girly without going too pink for once, and of course, it was very cheeky... Pin It Now!