Minion Birthday Cake

Just a photo of the finished article today:

40th Birthday Party

Pardon my absence - it's been a busy old week!
Made what felt like a hundred cakes...

It was four. It just felt like more. 'Twas Dan's 40th birthday, so I offered to make some cake.
I thought a couple of sheet cakes would be good, but for a birthday surprise I wanted to make some cakes that looked like his cats.

Here they are... cats in boxes.

So this is a bit of a hotch potch of cake making - there's an abundance of new stuff to be used, and icing to prepare!

I used a 5egg cake mix for each pair of cakes (one sheet/one cat in each flavour) and the mix was divided and flavoured before adding to the tins.

First up -Sheet cakes
I made two of them chocolate orange cake with an orange flavoured buttercream frosting, and a vanilla sponge with a chocolate ganache topping.

Here's my first new toy - tray bake foils. Exciting!

How about something a little different? Hemispheric cake tins? Yes indeed!

oooh, that's me in there...

Stackable cooling racks? Is there no gadget I won't buy?

 (I haven't found my photos yet... here are some to keep you going )

Next on the list is the indispensable non-stick-in-a-bottle: 

 

GREASE THEM TINS!!

 

 Annnywaaay... here's what they looked like after they'd been cooked:

rack 'em up...

And this is what the cake tin looked like - non stuck!

 It was the fun bit next - decorating.

I used a dark chocolate ganache for the plain sponge, and an orange flavoured butter cream on the chocolate cake.
Then added chocolate candy beans (a marvelous Home Bargains purchase...) and malteasers.

 

  

 And so to the cats!!

Orange flavoured and coloured icing for Ginge, black chocolate flavoured icing for Stumpy:

Coloured roll out icing make the facial features and ears - 

Hehe - more cats in boxes!

 

Batman Cup Cakes

A nice easy one today - Batcupcakes.

I'm Batman...

Today's toy is a Batman cookie cutter!




Cup cakes -
4oz marg
4oz caster sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4oz self raising flour

Icing (this made loads, most of which I'm saving for next week) -
Big dollop marg  (sorry, that's not very technical.)
1kg icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

100g block of black icing

Make up cakes as usual - cream marg and sugar together, whisk in eggs and vanilla, mix in flour.
Scoop into large cup cakes with you trusty medium sized ice-cream scoop.
Cook for 20mins or so at 190oC until golden brown and cooked through.

Allow to cool on a wire rack (look at my funky new rack! It stacks!!!)

Roll out the icing on a flat surface with a light dusting of icing sugar. Rotate, flip and roll until it's about 2mm thick.

 Buff with polishing tool for a mirror finish.

Doesn't quite show how mirrory this was!

Take the cutter and stamp out many many bats...

 

 

Lift each bat carefully and allow to air dry on a nonstick sheet.

Load a sandwich bag with icing - force it all into one corner, then snip the corner off. Twist the bag until it starts flowing out of the hole.
Holding a cake in one hand, apply firm and constant pressure to the bag and rotate either the cake or the icing to cover the cake in an inwards spiral.

Let the cakes dry for an hour before applying the bats (if they don't quite stick scrape a small amount of icing off the tops. Only a tiny bit. Just enough to stop them wobbling about)

Present cakes to excitable child for his 4th birthday...

Gummy Bear Cake

 

A picture tells a thousand words... and I'm lazy, so pictures are all you're getting today!

 

 

 

I had nightmares about parades of marching gummy bears for days...