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Thursday, December 6, 2012

Nerf-day cake for Jamie (age 12)

I just got back from two weeks in Scotland. My cousin Jamie turned 12 while I was there (he's a millenium baby so it's easy to keep track of his age). For his birthday he and his dad (my uncle) had planned a party involving five or six of J's mates and a Nerf gun battle. Nerf guns are colourful plastic guns of all descriptions that fire three inch long orange foam pellets. They are very popular with little boys - Jamie has been into them for years. As he told it, this was his last big Nerf gun blow-out - he felt like he was getting too old for them.

I had plans to go out to East Lothian and hang out with all my sisters and their babies on the day of the party, but got thinking about what to get Jamie for his birthday and then thought of making a cake. I'm not often there on his birthday and I had plenty of time since I was on holiday (I love baking when I have time for it): it seemed like it could be fun for me and save his parents some bother. I don't know much about what 12 year old boys like, but started with the Nerf theme and the idea of a making a target popped up. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be coming together into a great idea, so I went with it.

I used my Grandma's kitchen and she helped me with the recipes, so these are not vegan since I a) wasn't making it for anyone veg, and b) didn't want to freak Grandma out with a weird recipe - the cake plan was already pretty far out for her...

Preparatory sketches
For the cake (Grandma's basic Victoria sponge recipe, plus red):
2 eggs
4 oz self raising flour
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz margarine / soft butter
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 tsp red food colouring

For the buttercream filling (Grandma's recipe):
1 tbsp water
1/2 oz caster sugar
1/2 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar

For decorating / finishing:
~10 glace cherries, chopped
~4 tbsp plum jam, warmed and strained
1 packet white ready to roll fondant icing
1-2 tsp red food colouring
1 Nerf gun pellet
red food writing pen

First, make the cake. Heat the oven to 170C. Grease two 8 in sandwich cake tins and line the bases with paper. Sieve the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then add all the other ingredients and beat until well combined - either by hand or in a food processor (I don't have a food processor at home but for this I got to use Grandma's - it's a Kenwood dating from the 50s and it is amazing. One day perhaps I'll have one of my own, it feels like a 50s housewifely dream using it). Divide the mixture (which should be intensely red) evenly between the two prepared tins and bake for 20 min / until they are starting to come away from the sides of the tins. Let sit for 10 min or so then turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

While the cakes are cooking, make the buttercream filling. Put the butter, water and caster sugar in a small pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the liquid mix to the icing sugar and beat together til smooth. Allow to come to room temperature, when it should be a good spreading consistency.

When the cakes are cool, trim any rough bits from the edges and peel off the base papers. Spread half the buttercream on one side of one of the cakes, and the other half on one side of the other cake.  Set one icing-up on a plate and sprinkle the chopped glace cherries over it. Put the other cake icing-down neatly on top.

Take a lump of rolling icing about the size of a clementine and put it aside in a small bowl. Roll out the remaining rolling icing (about 5/6 of the packet) on a piece of clingfilm until big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake in one sheet (take care to avoid red cake crumbs or food colouring when doing this). Brush the top and sides of the cake with the warmed, sieved plum jam. Carefully lift the sheet of icing and place it, centred, on top of the cake. Gently smooth it down over the sides of the cake and neatly trim any excess.

Take the set aside icing and fold in red food colouring until it is bright red (about 1 tsp) - I used a spoon to knead and fold until the colour was evenly distributed to try and avoid staining my hands. Roll or squish out a circle approx. 2 in diameter and press this in place in the middle of the cake (might have been a good idea to stick it on with the sieved jam). Roll out a sausage and flatten it to make a ring about 1 cm across that will fit around the perimeter of the cake. Place this on in the same way as the central circle. Make a second ring that fits in the middle, equidistant between the outer ring and the inner circle, and place this as well. The cake should now look very much like a target.

Press the end of the Nerf pellet into the icing in a few positions to make small circular indentations. Use these as guides to carefully cut circles out of the white icing, exposing the red cake underneath. Cut a hole in the icing in the centre of the central circle (bullseye!) just big enough to fit the Nerf pellet and then push the (clean) Nerf pellet into the hole, business end first, so it is sticking out of the cake at a jaunty angle.

Use the writing pen (I saw this in a cake shop down the road for Grandma's and was curious to try it - it looks just like a felt tip pen but writes with food colouring) to write a message along one of the white strips in the target... the Nerf-day pun occurred to me and I couldn't let it go, especially since the party wasn't on Jamie's actual birthday (a couple of days later on a weekday), so the cake really was for his 'Nerf-day'.

Finally, we used balls of the left-over rolling icing to stick the candles in and pressed them in place on the plate around the edges of the cake.


I was pretty pleased with this. It was a fun project, and fun to combine Grandma's recipes with my ideas and things I thought 12 year old boys would be into. The rolling icing was really fun and easy to work with (and appears to be vegan). It gives a  resilient finish - butter icing is so sensitive to accidental touching or changes in temperature, this stuff is robust. I was worried all the way through that the red would come out pink, which is one reason why I used so much food colouring. I'm glad I did, as it was quite high-impact, but using another colour would also work, and perhaps you could then use less. I really liked Grandma's buttercream recipe: a clever way to make a lighter buttercream / avoid having to use loads of butter.

As soon as J saw it he took photos and told me he was posting it on Instagram, which I figured was probably as good a thumbs-up as I could hope for (although he then proceeded to explain to me what Instagram is, I guess he sees me as hopelessly old and uncool even if he did think the cake was cool). Since I missed the party I didn't see the reaction, but Simon (J's dad / my uncle) said the red cake inside was a great surprise and it was all gone by the time I got back so I'll have to assume it looked and tasted good when cut!
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