8th Birthday: Strawberry-Chocolate 'The Battle Cats' Tiered Cake

For s's 8th birthday, he requested this as his birthday cake. It is from a computer game called 'The Battle Cats'. He also dressed up as a Battle Cat for Halloween, and we made AI-generated trampolining Battle Cats for his birthday invitations (his birthday party was at a trampoline park, with all the boys from his class)...

I've never made a tiered cake before, so this is definitely a challenge! But at least it looks like an actual cake. And I'm hoping if I get the cat and dog figures right, it'll be a hit...  

I decided to make three tiers - odd numbers are always good, and this seemed like the minimum to make it look legit. Five seemed like a bit much for a first attempt... and would also have been way too much cake! It definitely has to involve two different types of cake (looks like strawberry and chocolate); and two different colours of icing (pink in the chocolate cake and white everywhere else). It looks like there is cream on top of each tier, but (1) I hate cream and (2) it wouldn't keep or travel at all - so I wondered about trying a cream cheese based icing instead, and putting some pink in some of it for the pink icing. The cat and dog shapes and the orange base cake will involve fondant (white, black and orange). And then there are the extras: a gold number 8, a red and gold bow, a gold bell, white candles, strawberries, and white mini meringues.

I only had one round springform cake tin (c. 21 cm in diameter), and I didn't really want to buy more. I also wanted this to be the bottom/biggest tier, as I didn't want to end up with tons of cake. I used foil and string to make a mini (8.5 cm diameter) cake tin from two crumpet rings stacked one on top of the other - for the top tier. And decided the middle tier should be c. 15 cm diameter to look right, and that I would bake it in my 21 cm diameter tin and then cut down to size. The bottom and top tiers are strawberry cake, and the middle tier is chocolate cake.

For the strawberry cake, I remembered that the mango cake I made for s's birthday last year was based on a strawberry cake recipe, and it worked quite well - so I used that one.

For the chocolate cake, my friend H who makes excellent cakes suggested this Ottolenghi cake. Initially I thought it sounded delicious for adults but perhaps a bad idea for kids as it is quite dark and had lots of coffee in it... but then had a double brainwave: (i) I could use decaf! and (2) the kids will already have plenty with the rest of the cake, perhaps I should just make what I like the sound of! Also, it looked like a good colour and texture.

For the icing, I started out with this cream cheese frosting recipe. 

 I made three online orders of specialist items in advance:

1) From a raw food shop: freeze-dried strawberry powder (for the strawberry cake and icing), freeze-dried strawberry slices (for the sliced strawberry decorations - winter strawberries are awful and fresh ones wouldn't have kept). 

2) From a Christmas shop: wide red and gold ribbon with wire in it (to make the bow), a little gold-coloured bell (I also bought some Christmas crackers for Christmastime!). 

3) From a baking shop: orange fondant (which turned out to be hard and no use), pack of 10 white birthday candles with white holders (used 8), a gold glittery number 8 candle, some cake dowels (to assuage my fear of tiers - I think robust plastic straws e.g. bubble tea straws or reusable plastic ones would also have been OK), some cake boards (needed 2, cut to size - for the top and middle tiers).

Then I also did a big Føtex (our nearest big grocery store) shop that included: black fondant, white fondant, orange food colouring, unsalted butter, mini meringues, and the rest of the cake ingredients.

Also in advance of starting to bake, I improvised a base board - I used a round wooden board that was just the right size (approx. 24 cm diameter), and then used four blobs of sticky tack and four Lego pieces to make little cylindrical feet about a centimetre high. This felt like an optional extra at the time, but actually was probably essential as the board was strong enough to carry the cake (which was quite heavy when done); and the feet allowed me to pick it up easily. It also made it look more like the pic! I

I made the cake over 1 1/2 days (nb it also took most of a day before that to work out everything I needed from Føtex and do the grocery shopping). On Day 1, I made the strawberry cakes and baked them in the morning; then took a lunch break, then made the chocolate cake and the icings in the afternoon. On Day 2, I assembled the cake and made the decorations (the cat and dog characters, and the bow).

For the strawberry cake (bottom and top layers):

Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature before you begin.

10 oz / 283.5 g plain flour 

1 oz freeze dried strawberry powder  

1 ½ tsp baking powder 

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 

8 oz unsalted butter, room temp

½ tsp salt 

10 oz granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract 

zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp strawberry extract (did not have - used 1 tsp strawberry-lime juice instead)

6 egg whites, room temp (I bought the pre-separated egg whites for the first time for this, and was glad)

8 oz milk, room temp (used oat milk)

2 oz vegetable oil 

1 drop pink food colouring 

1 drop red food colouring

For the chocolate cake (middle layer):

8.8 oz / 250 g unsalted butter, room temp, cut into 1 cm cubes, plus extra for greasing

7 oz / 200 g dark (70%) chocolate, chopped into 2 cm pieces

1 tsp instant coffee (I used decaf), dissolved in 350 ml boiling water

8.8 oz / 250 g granulated sugar

2 large eggs, room temp, lightly beaten

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

8.5 oz / 240 g self-raising flour (used plain flour, including 3 generous tsp baking powder)

1 oz / 30 g cocoa powder

pinch of salt 

For the icing:

8 oz / 227 g 1 cup cream cheese, room temp

4 oz / 114 g / 1/2 cup salted butter, room temp

1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract

12.7 oz / 360 g / 3 cups icing sugar, sifted*

freeze dried strawberry powder

 

*I ended up using more. 

 

For the decoration and assembly:

1 pack black fondant icing

1 pack white fondant icing

1 pack orange fondant icing (nb the orange fondant icing I bought was bad so I coloured some white fondant with orange gel food colouring instead)

freeze-dried strawberry slices

white mini meringues

8 white birthday candles with white holders 

1 number '8' gold glittery birthday candle

Wide red and gold wired ribbon for the bow

Little gold-coloured bell

1 robust base board (the assembled cake was quite heavy) - used a round wooden chopping board with improvised feet - see explanation above.

2 cardboard cake boards (for the middle and top layers) - I drew circles on rectangular boards using the trimmed cake sizes and a compass, then cut down to size - slightly small is good, then they are easier to hide - I also cut a c. 1 cm diameter circular (ish) hole in the middle of each one so I could poke a dowel down the middle for max stability when assembled.

9 cake dowels (these are basically thick plastic straws - bubble tea straws seem to be recommended) - 4 for the bottom layer, 4 for the middle layer, and one longer, more robust one to go all the way down the middle.

To make the strawberry cake: Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. Prepare your cake tins by greasing and lining with baking paper. I used one 21 cm round springform tin (bottom layer), and one improvised 8.5 cm tin (top layer). Place an oven rack in the middle position and heat the oven to 350ºF/176ºC. Put the butter in a large bowl and beat until smooth and shiny. Gradually sprinkle in the sugar, and beat until the mixture is fluffy and almost white. Add the egg whites approx. two at a time, beating in between. Whisk the flour, strawberry powder, baking powder, bicarb, salt, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Combine the milk, oil, vanilla extract, strawberry extract (or juice) and food colouring in a separate medium bowl. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to butter mixture, followed immediately by about a third of the milk mixture, then mix until almost incorporated. Repeat two more times. When the batter appears blended, stop and scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Divide the batter between the prepared tins so that it comes up to the same height in both. Smooth the tops with a rubber spatula. Bake cakes until they feel firm in the centre and a skewer comes out clean or with just a few crumbs on it - about 35-40 min for the big cake (or a little bit longer), and about 22 min for the small cake (or a little longer). Transfer tins to a wire rack and let cool for 10 min. Invert cakes onto the rack and pop cakes out of tins. Cool completely before assembling and icing. When completely cool, keep covered in a chiller until ready to assemble.  

To make the chocolate cake:

Heat oven to 170°C/150°C fan-forced. Grease the same 21 cm round springform pan as used for the strawberry cake with butter, and line with baking paper.

Place the butter, chocolate and hot coffee in a large heatproof bowl and mix well until everything is melted, combined and smooth. Whisk in sugar by hand until dissolved. Add eggs and vanilla extract and whisk again until thoroughly combined and smooth. Sift flour, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt together into a medium bowl, then whisk into the melted chocolate mixture until smooth. Batter will be liquid, but don’t think you’ve missed something; this is how it should be.

Pour batter into the prepared tin, tapping the base of the tin to remove air bubbles, and bake for 50-60 min, until cake is cooked and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean or with just a few dry crumbs attached. The top will form a crust and crack a little, but don’t worry, this is expected. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack for 20 min before removing from tin, then set aside on wire rack until completely cool. 

When completely cool, keep covered in a chiller until ready to assemble. 

To make the icing:

Beat the softened cream cheese and butter together until creamy and well blended, with no lumps. 

Add the vanilla. Then add one cup of icing sugar at a time, beating gently at first, until each addition is completely incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to incorporate it all. Then beat hard to combine. 

At this point I realised that it was way less firm than normal buttercream, looked up a normal buttercream recipe and realised what it needed was a lot more icing sugar...

Split the mixture - most of it should stay white (for sandwiching the strawberry cake and making the white cream-looking stuff, but a bit should be pink for sandwiching the chocolate cake. To the white mix, I added about one more cup of icing sugar to make a sufficiently firm texture. To the pink mix, I added some freeze dried strawberry powder, a few drops pink food colouring, and some icing sugar, until it reached a similar texture to the white icing.

Store in the fridge until ready to assemble. 

To assemble and decorate:  

Trim all three cakes so that they are flat on top and about the same height. Trim around the edge of the top one so you can see the contents. Trim the middle (chocolate) one until it is a circle approx. 15 cm diameter. Cut the bottom cake horizontally through the middle and sandwich with white icing. Cut the chocolate cake horizontally through the middle and sandwich with pink icing. Cut the top cake horizontally through the middle twice, and sandwich with white icing.

Smear some icing on the base board and then stick the big cake on it. Put some icing around the edges to help stick on the fondant around the outside. Roll out the orange fondant to about 2 mm thick, and wrap it as neatly and smoothly around the base cake as you can, trimming as needed.. I need to work on smooth fondant application!

Push 4 cake dowels into the cake within the area where the next layer will sit, then trim them so their height is just below the top of the cake. Cover the top of the bottom tier with a generous layer of white icing, so it looks a bit like the cream in the pic.

Put some icing on the medium sized cake board, then stick down the middle (chocolate) cake. Place it carefully in the centre of the bottom tier. Push 4 cake dowels into the cake within the area where the next tier will sit, then trim them so their height is just below the top of the cake. Cover the top of the middle tier with a generous layer of white icing, so it looks a bit like the cream in the pic.

Put the top cake on its cake board, sticking it down with icing as for the other two. Place it carefully in the centre of the middle tier. Push a long cake dowel down the middle of all the tiers until it hits the bottom board, then trim. Cover the top of the top tier with a generous layer of white icing, so it looks a bit like the cream in the pic.

Now make the cat and dog figures. I waited until now so I could see how big they needed to be to fit properly on the assembled cake. Roll out white fondant on a clean surface until c. 2 mm thick, then cut out the shapes with a sharp knife. Make their features with black fondant and press into place. Apply the shapes to the cake in the right places, using icing as glue. 

Make the bow with the wired ribbon and tie it around the stalk of the '8' candle along with the bell, to look like the picture.

Stick the bow+8 assembly in place on top, then put white mini meringues, freeze dried strawberry slices, and white candles in place around the cake to resemble the picture.

For transport, I found a transparent plastic storage box with a flat, separate lid. I put the cake on the lid, taped on a cushion out of bubble wrap to keep it in place, then covered with the box and taped that in place with gaffa tape. It worked - the cake survived the journey to the trampoline park in good shape!

Notes: If making the strawberry cake again, put more food colouring in - the batter was nice and pink, but after baking the cake wasn’t pink enough. I need to work out how to apply fondant so it comes out nice and smooth (I think a crumb coat and a flat-edged tool?). The chocolate cake was yum and I kind of want to try the whole Ottolenghi recipe with ganache and all. Probably the most delicious part of the whole cake was the improvised strawberry icing! The kids did not like the chocolate cake but the strawberry cake went down quite well (despite the cake looking a mess once sliced). I am not sure whether all the boards and dowels were necessary, but the cake did survive two rounds of birthday singing and transport beautifully, and it would have been a mega bummer if it didn’t after all that work…

Mandarin and hazelnut cake

For my birthday, S wanted to make me a cake. He asked for a suggestion. I asked my friend H, who is an excellent baker and shares many food interests with me. Specifically, I asked her for something easy, delicious, and that I had not tried before.

 

She suggested this one, S made it, and it ticked all the boxes. Not only that, it also felt very seasonal, with the oranges and hazelnuts - and was easy to transport, and kept well! And was perfect for a morning cake when I took a bit to work for work birthday celebration on the next workday after my birthday, which was a bit of a ghost ship day and I wanted to leave before lunch - I took some skyr to go with it and it had a lovely Christmas-brunch vibe for the few people I scraped together.

 

I would definitely make this again. I'd be tempted to try some variations as well - H suggested using ground almonds instead of hazelnuts; we have plenty of walnuts; how about swapping out the ginger for cardamom (inspired by this)? Lemons instead of oranges?

Note: S says he used cup measurements for everything except the hazelnuts - but then he would have been using US cups (240 ml = 1 cup) instead of AU cups (250 ml = 1 cup). So his version may have been slightly unique.

For the cake:
3 organic mandarins (about 95 g each), washed, unpeeled
4 eggs
270 g sugar (1 1/4 AU cups)

90 g melted butter
400 g hazelnut meal (ground hazelnuts)
75 g plain flour (1/2 AU cup)

2 tsp finely grated ginger
⅓ tsp baking powder

pinch of salt 

For the syrup:
220 g sugar (1 AU cup)

125 ml mandarin juice (1/2 AU cup)

1 tbsp julienne ginger
4 mandarins, peeled and thickly sliced crossways
Juice of ½ lemon

Heat oven to 160C and butter and flour a 12cm x 20cm loaf tin (he used our standard sized loaf tin). Place mandarins in a saucepan, cover with plenty of water, bring to the boil and cook until soft (20-25 min). 

 

Drain, cool and chop (discard seeds), then purée in a blender or food processor.

 

Whisk eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy (3-4 min in an electric mixer, which would be ideal if we had one). Fold in mandarin purée and butter, then fold in hazelnut meal, flour, ginger, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Spoon into prepared tin, smooth top and bake until golden brown and a skewer inserted withdraws clean (1-1¼ hours). Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

 

For mandarin and ginger syrup, combine sugar, mandarin juice and 125 ml water in a saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar, then add the ginger and simmer until translucent and a light syrup forms (6-8 min). Stir in mandarin slices and lemon juice, remove from heat and leave to cool.

 

Serve cake with mandarin and ginger syrup spooned on top. We did this per slice, and I think this was good, as the cake could have gone a bit soggy when stored if you did the whole thing at once - also this way you could have as much or as little syrup as you wanted, and try it without the syrup (almost as good!). I also really liked it with some skyr or greek yoghurt.

 

Cake will keep stored in an airtight container for 3 days - or longer in the fridge. Store the syrup separately.

S birthday: Mango + macadamia BvB cake

  

S's birthday came around. He requested mango and nuts. Little s wanted to make it a Dortmund (BvB) cake. Soooo another go at a mango cake it is. And I decided to go with macadamias for the nuts.

I was fairly happy with my last mango cake. But it wasn't really mango-y enough, and was slightly faff-y, and also used only egg whites. I'd thought putting in mango puree might make things too dense, but this recipe looked quite promising and I decided to give it another chance...

(I baked the cake in one 9 inch cake tin, it was a bit huge, ended up cutting into three layers... a half amount would have been enough I think)

For the cake:

 

1 cup / 240 ml mango puree

1/2 cup / 118 ml oat milk

3/4 cup / 177 ml veg oil

2 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 tsp vanilla powder

1 1/4 cup / 250 g / 8 oz sugar

1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

3 cups / 375 g / 13.2 oz plain flour

 

For the icing:

230 g / 8 oz cream cheese (used 1 whole pack philadelphia)

113 g / 4 oz unsalted butter

3 cups / 390g / 12 oz icing sugar

1 cup / 4 oz freeze dried mango powder 

pinch salt

yellow food colouring

a few drops oat milk

 

For the rest:

1 pack roasted salted macadamia nuts, chopped

1 small pack black fondant

paper template for making the BvB logo (print twice, once to get the circle and overall design, once for the letters and numbers)

To make the cake: 

Grease and line cake tin. Heat oven to 350F / 180C.

Mix dry in a large bowl with a fork. Mix wet in a separate bowl. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Put in cake tin and then into oven. Turn down to 325F / 163C and bake until springy and a skewer comes out clean. Checked after 40 min, think it ultimately took about 55 min. Will be faster if using more than one tin (or making a half amount). Cool in tin for 10 min or so until sufficiently cooled to turn out, then let cool completely on a cooling rack.

 

To make the icing, beat the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy, then add the sugar and mango powder and beat until well mixed, adding the salt and colour partway through, and some milk if needed.

 

To assemble the cake, slice the cooled cake horizontally into three layers. Put the bottom layer on plate or base and add a layer of icing, then chopped macadamias, then the next layer of cake. Add another layer of cake, then icing, then macadamias, then the next layer of cake. Ice all over the top and sides with the rest of the icing.

 

Cut the shapes of the outer circle, letters and numbers for the BvB logo, then place them gently on top.

 

 

It was reasonably simple and effective! I managed to get the colours right. The circle was a bit difficult to handle (slightly floppy/stretchy)... We'd considered trying modelling chocolate to make the logo pieces, perhaps that would have worked better - more rigid - but would we have needed moulds?

The cake part was really good - I think the best mango cake yet! Easy and quick, and actually tasted like mango. Sliced well and not too dense. I'd make this one again. The icing wasn't perfect, think I'm going off the freeze dried mango. But it was fine. And I somehow eyeballed just the right amount for the cake this time. And I really liked the macadamias in there. 

 

 

7th birthday: Mango Peashooter Cake

s turned 7! Gosh, almost not a little kid any more. His birthday fell on a Sunday, so we asked him what he would most like to do that day... He said he wanted to play with his friends, so we ended up inviting the 12 boys from his school class over for a party! It was all about gaming this year - purchased lots of gaming themed paper cups, plates, decorations etc. Even managed a Plants (vs Zombies) themed garden treasure hunt... And s requested a Peashooter (from PvZ) for his birthday cake... And mango (again). Yet another challenge!

Ever since s was big enough to make a birthday cake request, he has requested mango cake. So I have had a little bit of practice. But haven't been completely happy with my mango cake results so far. Last year's cake was nice and mango-y, but rather too dense. It might have been due to the baking powder being a bit old, or maybe I didn't beat enough air into the mix... or maybe it was just the recipe, with no eggs and mango puree. Last year I didn't really need to sculpt, so the texture and composition of the cake could be all about taste...But this year I wanted to sculpt, and hoped to find a cake with a better texture for sculpting / in general. I decided freeze dried mango powder was a key ingredient, purchased some, and then started hunting far and wide for the right recipe. I consulted our departmental cake whiz at work - who also happens to be Filipino (according to the East Asians at work, the Philippines is the source of the best mangoes in the world - I want to try!), and he agreed about the freeze dried mango powder and made some helpful suggestions... But it was not easy to find a recipe with mango powder in the actual cake! Nevertheless, buoyed by the moral support, and widening my search to include other freeze dried fruit powders, I found a few options... I was seriously considering this one when I noticed the author - Liz from 'Is It Cake?'! s and I love watching that show - and she was memorably brilliant - and it was the first time I noticed a cake recipe specifically saying it was good for carving! I was sold.

The only downside of that recipe was that it used egg whites but not yolks (which I thought might have the upside of making it less dense). So I needed to find something to do with the yolks. I decided to crack open a big can of mango puree and try out a mango curd. I wasn't sure if I'd find a place for it in the cake (in the end I didn't) - and I am not sure if I love it, the eggs and butter kind of distract from the mango intensity. But still, it was a pretty good use of egg yolks. The recipe for the curd is here.

I wanted to use fondant for the outside, and figured I'd need a mango buttercream (with more freeze dried mango powder) for sticking and layering. Thought it might be smart to follow a recipe - went with this one.

For the cake:

10 oz plain flour 

1 oz freeze dried mango powder 

1 ½ tsp baking powder 

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 

8 oz unsalted butter, room temp 

½ tsp salt 

10 oz granulated sugar 

½ tsp vanilla powder

zest of 1 lime 

6 egg whites, room temp 

8 oz milk, room temp 

2 oz vegetable oil 

2 drops yellow food colouring 

1 drop red food colouring 

 

For the buttercream:

 

1 cup (226 g / 8 oz) unsalted butter, room temp

3/4 cup (18 g / 0.9 oz) freeze-dried mango powder (use less!)

3 tbsp (45 ml) milk, room temp

3 cups (360 g / 12.7 oz) icing sugar 

pinch of salt  

 

For the decoration:

 

2 packs of green fondant icing, one a bit lighter / brighter than the other

1 pack white fondant icing

black gel food colouring (or black fondant) 

white shimmer powder for highlights (optional)

don't forget candles!

To make the cake:

 

(Notes: All ingredients must be at room temperature. I baked this in one 8 inch round springform cake tin and one loaf tin, and it worked out being about right as a starting point to make the shape and size of cake I wanted.)

Heat the oven to 350ºF/176ºC. Grease and line the cake tins.

Beat the butter in a medium bowl until smooth and shiny. Gradually sprinkle in the sugar and beat until the mixture is fluffy and almost white. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl (I wasn't sure whether to do this, so I beat them until loose peaks - really didn't want a super dense cake again!). Add the egg whites approximately two at a time, beating to mix in between. 

Whisk the flour, mango powder, baking powder, bicarb, salt, vanilla and lime zest in a medium bowl. Combine the milk, oil, and food colourings in a separate bowl. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, followed immediately by about a third of the milk mixture, and mix until ingredients are almost incorporated into the batter. Repeat this process 2 more times, until the batter appears blended. Divide the batter between the prepared pans, aiming for a similar batter height in each. Smooth the tops. 

Bake cakes until they feel firm in the centre and a skewer comes out clean, about 35-40 min. Transfer tins to a wire rack and let cool for 10 min. Invert cakes onto the rack and pop cakes out of tins. Cool completely before assembling and icing.

To make the buttercream: 

Beat the butter until creamy and light in colour. Add milk and mango powder and beat until fully combined. Add the icing sugar one cup at a time and mix. Add pinch of salt and mix until well combined.

To assemble:

(Notes: To make a base for the cake, I covered a large flat bamboo chopping board with silver foil. I decided to go for a semi-3D shape - a lying-down peashooter - since a fully 3D standing-up one seemed like a bit tooo much of a challenge. I couldn't bring myself to buy both black and white fondant just for a few little bits, so I bought white and mixed a bit of it with a LOT of black gel food colouring to make some black.)

Cut the cooled cakes into the peashooter shape and put together. I got most of its head out of the round cake, and made the rest of it by cutting and shaping the remaining pieces of that one and the loaf cake. Use the buttercream as a glue to layer up the cake where needed. 

When the shape looks right, cover the cake in buttercream and smooth it out as much as possible.

Roll out the fondant icing (if it sticks to your surface, roll it on/between clingfilm). When it is the right thickness (c. 2 mm?) and size, lift it gently over your cake and smooth it into place. I used a lighter green for the head of the peashooter, and a darker green for its stalk and leaves - using one piece to cover the head, one to cover the base leaves and stalk, and one to cover the leaf at the back of the head. Press all around the base and bring together as smoothly as possible.

Roll a few extra pieces of green fondant into long sausage shapes to make the parts linking the leaves and head; and to make the outline of its shooting mouthpart. Press into place.

Roll out the black fondant to make the inside of the shooting mouthpart and to make the eyes. Press into place. 

Make small flat discs of white fondant and press into place to finish the eyes.

Press the fondant gently but firmly with a blunt thinnish edge (I used the edge of a rubber spatula), to make the leaf veins and divisions between leaves and stem.

Dust white shimmer powder to make highlights on the head.

If you have sufficient suitable remaining cake, buttercream and fondant, you could shape and cover some peas! About the same size as the shooting mouth makes sense... I did this thinking perhaps s could have some teaser cake in the morning before the party - in the end we didn't have time for this but it was still kind of nice to have them for sharing.

We decided not to show the finished cake to s until we revealed it at his birthday party, with the candles and singing, in front of all the boys! I was pretty happy with it but also a bit nervous... My heart literally leapt when, as soon as he saw it, he said: 'it's good mummy'! Praise indeed - esp as he can be a bit of a wee hater...

The cake was a really nice texture and tasted good but I didn't really find it mango-y enough. Perhaps I'll try a different recipe next time (if there is another mango cake request!) - maybe this one.

The buttercream was not the right texture. I think I pitched in too much extra mango powder - just noticed the recipe starts with whole freeze dried rasps, I'm sure I measured the same amount of powder by volume, which will have been way more! It wasn't really sticky enough for slathering, and it stressed me out a bit as I couldn't get it to stick to the cake very well. Next time a different recipe (or just stick to the one given...).

I can see the cake is a bit bumpy in places - if the buttercream had been a better texture, I can see it would have been important to make as smooth a surface as possible before putting the fondant over.

I had to mix a lottt of black food colouring into the white fondant to make it black enough - and then it was a bit too sticky for good rolling - so those bits were tricky. I might be tempted to buy black as well as white for optimal results...

I think the mouthpart could have been a bit better - although I am not certain how.

The white shimmer seemed like a good idea for the highlighting, and I kind of like it, but I don't think it is completely necessary. Also it doesn't look that different from just flour or icing sugar or cornstarch or so - not so shimmery - maybe one of those white powders would have been OK instead?

S birthday mango-chocolate football cake

For S birthday this year, he wanted mango and chocolate, Dortmund football team themed...

I wanted to try making mango cake with freezedried mango powder this time. It was surprisingly hard to find a recipe with mango powder in it. I decided to use this one, subbing the raspberry powder with mango. And then mango icing based on this recipe. And coconut 'grass'.

I ended up doing a half size cake cos I realized it'd prob be too much if I did the whole lot. Meant 1.5 eggs, bit awkward, but if I was doing it for more people could do the whole lot...

(for a half size)

For the cake:

5 oz plain flour

1 oz freeze dried mango

(1 oz cocoa powder)

1 1/8 tsp baking powder

3 oz butter, softened

5 oz sugar

1 1/2 eggs

3/4 tsp vanilla essence

5/8 cup milk

yellow + black food colouring 

 

For the icing:

4 oz cream cheese

2 oz butter

6 oz icing sugar

2 oz freeze dried mango

For the 'grass':

4 oz desiccated coconut

c. 2 tbsp warm water

green food colouring

 

Also:

White mesh from a bag of garlic

wire

six lego figures, three with yellow dortmund shirts made from felt

one little ball

chocolate, chopped

Heat oven to 180C / 350F. Grease and line the base of 1 9-in round baking tin.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, mango, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar til pale and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla.

Alternate adding the flour mix and the milk to the egg mix, beginning and ending with flour (3x flour, 2x milk), fully incorporating after each addition.

 

(if doing black and yellow for dortmund, split the mix and add black food colouring to one and yellow to the other)

 

Transfer to the tin. Bake til a skewer comes out clean - 24-28 min. Cool in tin 10 min before removing to wire rack. Cool to room temp.

 

For the icing, beat butter and cream cheese til smooth. Add icing sugar gradually, and mango powder. Beat until smooth and fluffy. 

For the grass, heat oven to 70C. Put coconut in a bowl and add food colouring and water and mix until it is s good and consistent colour. Spread thinly on a baking sheet lined with paper. Stir every 10 min til dry - c. 40 min total.

To assemble, cut the cake in two horizontally. Layer it with icing. Put top half on, cover with icing. Press 'grass' onto the top to make a football field. Make a goal out of net and wire and press it in on one side. Add the figures and ball to make a scene.

It didn't rise well. Perhaps it took too long to mix in the yellow and black. Or perhaps the baking powder was too old. Or perhaps something else went wrong... Oh well, it still tasted nice enough.

6th birthday: Mango Shiny Mew Cake

This year's cake request was mango, and shiny Mew (the Pokemon). I felt like expectations were pretty high, and it was a tough challenge... I didn't feel like I could do a good Mew as a 3D-sculpted cake - also it is tricky trying to work out if a cake will be good for sculpting before baking. So this time I decided to go 2D, and also took inspiration from perler (s likes that too), so did a kind of perler-style shiny Mew made of little edibles of several colours / types... I also bought a backup sugar paper Mew in case it all went horribly wrong, from the same place I got the muffin toppers for s's birthday cookies to take to school.

I made a mango cake from this recipe (coincidentally vegan), and a mango icing that I basically freestyled (similar to last year's), and sandwiched it with a kind of mango jam.

For the cake:

2 cups / 220 g / 7.76 oz plain flour

2 tsp / 8 g baking powder

½ tsp / 3 g bicarbonate of soda

½ cup / 120 ml veg oil

1 cup / 225 g / 7.9 oz sugar

1 cup / 265 ml mango purée (used tinned)

1 tsp / 5 ml vanilla extract (used powder)

¼ cup / 60 g milk (used oat milk)

For the icing:

4 oz butter

4 oz icing sugar

c. 1/2 cup (or more if possible, replacing some or all of the icing sugar) freeze-dried mango, powdered

For the mango 'jam':

1 packet dried mango, snipped into small pieces

For the decoration:

101 dark chocolate balls

93 pale bluish white balls

33 blue balls (note: it would have been nice if 4 of these were a darker blue or purple)

2 white chocolate balls

A rectangular perler base plate with at least 20 x 25 perler places

To make the cake:

Heat the oven to 180C and lined an 8 inch round cake tin with baking paper.

 

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder and bicarb.

 

In a large bowl, whisk sugar and oil together until pale and well combined. Add the mango puree and beat well. Beat in the vanilla and milk.

Gently fold the flour mixture into the liquid mixture and mix until everything is well combined and there are no large flour pockets. Do not overmix.

 

Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30-35 min, until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool completely before icing.

 

To make the icing:

 

Beat the butter in a medium bowl until pale. Add the icing sugar and powdered freeze-dried mango and beat some more. Chill until needed, but bring to room temperature before using.

 

To make the mango 'jam':

Put the dried mango in a small bowl and cover (just) with hot water. Let soak overnight or for several hours. Blend with a wand blender to a thick, smooth, jam-like consistency.

To assemble:

Cut the cooled cake horizontally in half to make two layers. I froze the cake after cooling and cutting because I thought it might make it easier to ice - perhaps it did, but I also think it might have messed up the texture and made it a bit too dense. 

When ready to ice, put the bottom half on a plate or serving disc, then spread the mango 'jam' over it. Put the second cake half on top. Spread the icing over the top and round the sides as smoothly as possible.

 

Press the perler plate, spike side down, into the icing quite hard until you can see a grid of indentations. Then arrange the balls according to this design:

The birthday boy seemed happy with it! He ate lots and didn't dis it at all - he's a bit of a grumpy handful these days so that felt like success. I thought the cake was a bit dense but it tasted pretty good. The rest of the tin of mango puree became delicious smoothies, it was really good.

5th birthday: Dragonfish cake

For the first time this year I had a birthday cake request from s (who was turning five! FIVE!). Dragonfish. Perhaps I was too ambitious last year and got his expectations up? It's nice to be believed in, and I thought I’d try… Request was for coconut and mango. And blue. 

Decided to do a coconut cake and mango icing. Needed to get a few details for it to be a dragonfish - mainly a light- up lure and long, sharp, multitudinous teeth. Then also big weird eyes, and some spikes and spots along a long, thin body.

Hard to find good pics of dragonfish, since it cannot live above deep sea level. But I am pretty sure s got the idea from wild kratts so I partly based the look on that.

Pretty much followed this recipe for the coconut cake - baked in one round springform tin and one loaf tin.

For the cake:

250 g / 9 oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

250 g / 9 oz sugar 

4 eggs, lightly beaten 

1 tsp vanilla 

250 g / 9oz flour 

3 tsp baking powder 

75 g / 2 ½ oz desiccated coconut 

4 tbsp coconut cream

 

For the icing:

6 oz butter

6 oz icing sugar

c. 3/4 cup mango purée made from dried unsweetened mango covered in hot water and soaked for a few hours, then blended up

3-4 tbsp ground desiccated coconut

Food colouring (should be blue)

 

For Features:

1 fresh ripe/brown coconut

1 pack marzipan

c. 30 g dark chocolate

Small white chocolate drops / buttons

Food colouring (blue, green)

Small bike light

Tape

Kitchen foil 

To make the cake:
Heat the oven to 180C. Grease tins and line the bases with buttered baking paper.

Cream the softened butter and sugar together for 3–4 min, or until pale and light – do this as much as possible, here is where I wish I had a mixer of some kind. Gradually add the eggs, mixing well between each addition. Add the vanilla and mix again. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl, add the desiccated coconut and coconut cream, and beat again until the mixture is smooth and the ingredients are well combined.

Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared tins and bake for 25–30 min, or until the cakes are well-risen, golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave the cakes to cool in the tins for 5 min, then carefully turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

To make the icing:

Beat the butter until really pale and light. Gradually add the icing sugar, mixing well between each addition. Add the thick mango puree and ground desiccated coconut and mix again. Finally add the food colouring until desired colour is reached (nb I wanted it to be blue but it ended up more green - think the orange-yellow colour of the mango might have skewed it). Chill until needed.

To make the features:

Teeth + spikes - fresh coconut - cracked open and flesh removed in as big pieces as possible; then sliced into thin spikes. Tooth pieces left white; tail spike pieces coloured blue by mixing with food colouring.

Lure+spots - marzipan, food colouring, bike light, tape, foil - marzipan coloured with food colouring by kneading briefly together until colour consistent, then squished into spots; bike light taped into appropriate shape then wrapped with foil, then foil covered with coloured marzipan to make the part that attaches the lure to the fish's body.

Eyes - Melted dark chocolate with small white chocolate blobs in the middle. 

To assemble:

Carve the cakes into shape, sticking together with icing. I used a couple of toothpicks hidden at the back of its head as well, to keep the jaws open. When the shape is OK, cover the outside with icing. Then add the features in appropriate places.

I made the cakes, icing and most of the features two days before the birthday, then chilled overnight, then assembled the day before and kept in cool room overnight. Ideally you could do it all in one day, but... life... All the components should be chilled when assembling - and definitely not at all warm - think it makes everything easier if stuff is stiffer.

I wasn't completely happy with the colour, and the fish was a little dumpier than I would have liked, but on the whole it turned out like I wanted - recognisably a dragonfish!

Apricot, walnut and honey loaf cake

I love a tea loaf. And anything that involves honey and walnuts tends to catch my eye - since I began dabbling in beekeeping I've always failed to keep up with the honey supplies (I read in a beekeeping book that beekeepers tend to start because of the bees and stop because of the honey - it struck a chord); and we have an epic quantity of walnuts dropping every autumn, that it is hard to keep up with. So I liked the look of this one - also because I liked the idea of cake as a vehicle for cheese...

I convinced s to help me make it this windy sunday afternoon.

150 g honey
100 g light brown sugar
250 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
50 g oats

150 g dried apricots

2 eggs
125 ml black tea, cooled if possible

150 g golden sultanas (used mix of these and raisins)
50 g walnuts

Heat oven to 160C. Grease and line loaf tin. Gently warm the honey and sugar in a small saucepan, without stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and oats in a large bowl. Cut the apricots into small pieces and stir them in. Break the eggs into a small bowl, beat lightly with a fork.

Pour the warm honey and sugar mixture into the flour together with the tea and the beaten eggs. Then fold the golden sultanas and walnuts into the batter. Scoop the mixture, which will be soft and runny, like a gingerbread batter, into the lined tin.

Bake for 60-75 min until risen and lightly springy (mine seemed perfect at 60 min). Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.

 

It fit perfectly in my regular sized loaf tin.

4th Birthday: Stegosaurus Cake

Little s turned 4! Emphatically (emphasis all his) not little any more…

It was the first of his birthdays where he had plans / expectations - we’ve been working on a birthday list since about March. Also the first one with no limit on allowing him to have cake any more, really. So I wanted to do a good cake. Last year was a truck, he was into cars. This year I decided it should be a dinosaur… which sounded like a big challenge! But then I hit on the idea of making a stegosaurus with biscuits as plates, and all of a sudden a plan came together and I felt like it was on… So I made a stegosaurus cake. 

The cake is the chocolate marble Bundt from my German baking book (Luisa Weiss - Classic German Baking). I’d been wanting to try the marble cake for ages so I could use the Bundt tin again, but then for this purpose I actually baked it in a loaf tin and springform tin to give more sculptable pieces. I added a bit of green gel colouring to the white parts, otherwise followed the recipe.

I think it might be a good idea to use Bundt cake recipes for 3D sculpted cakes - Bundt recipes tend to be quite dense and good at holding shape. I've not easily found tasty-sounding recipes that I’m confident would hold their shape before - weirdly most cake recipes don't mention whether they are good for sculpting.

The biscuits are chocolate gingerbread from here. I made the full quantity of dough but it was too much so I froze half. Even a half quantity was too much - a quarter would have been enough to make the stegosaurus-plates! But I was glad to have spares / different ones to choose from.

The icing was my favourite cream cheese icing, which has featured on every s birthday cake so far!

For the biscuits:

(make these in advance - they need to be baked and cooled before cake assembly, and will keep for a good few weeks in an airtight box)

 

150 g plain flour

25 g cocoa

1/2 tbsp ground ginger

60 g butter, cubed

60 g brown sugar

70 g golden syrup

 

Prepare paper templates for the stegosaurus-plates - I did five different sizes, at least six of each size, to have several of each kind to choose from when assembly / spares in case of accidents - and remember they come in pairs on the dinosaur, so a good idea to aim for even numbers. I made them pointy on both ends, thinking a point should help them to stick in the cake.

Heat oven to 180C. Beat together flour, cocoa, ginger, butter and sugar until you can’t see any lumps of butter. Dribble in the syrup and beat to a smooth dough.

Take about half of the dough at a time and roll out between 2 sheets of baking paper to the thickness of a £1 coin. Peel away the top layer of paper and cut shapes, using a small knife to cut around your paper templates. Peel away the trimmings and lift the shapes onto baking paper on a baking tray. Roll some shapes for the spikes as well - again, remember you are aiming for 2 matching pairs. When you have used all the dough and have plenty of shapes, put in the oven and bake for 12-13 min until firm (they catch easily because of the syrup and it's hard to spot because of the cocoa - be careful!). Take out and let cool for 10 min, then move to a rack to finish cooling, before storing in an airtight box until needed.

For the cake:

(do the day before or earlier the same day - needs to cool before assembly)

100 g dark chocolate (c.70%), chopped

100 g white chocolate, chopped

250 g butter, softened

250 g sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

4 eggs

250 g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

c. 1 tsp green gel food colouring 

2 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp milk

Heat oven to 180C. Butter and flour the cake tins (I used one round springform and one loaf tin).

Put the chocolates in two separate bowls and heat in the microwave in 30 sec bursts, stirring every so often, until melted. I found the white chocolate took much longer to melt, but we got there eventually. Set aside til needed.

Beat the butter in a large bowl with the sugar and salt until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, until well combined. 

In a separate, medium bowl, mix the flour and baking powder with a fork. Then beat the flour into the egg mixture. Scrape one third of the batter back into the flour bowl. Add the white chocolate to the larger portion of batter, along with green food colouring, and mix until no streaks remain. Add the melted dark chocolate, cocoa and milk to the remaining one-third of batter and mix until no streaks remain.

Scrape half the white batter into the bottoms of the prepared cake tins. Then put in all the dark batter. Then put the rest of the white batter on top. Swirl with the blade of a knife to marble, and flatten the tops. Bake for 30-45 min, until a skewer comes out clean. Start checking at 30 min. My round cake took 30 min, and my loaf cake took about 40 min.

Place the tins on a rack and let cool for 10 min before unmolding and letting it cool upside down. Let cool completely. Keep in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm, until needed - good for a few days.

For the icing:

1/2 pack butter, softened

1 1/2 packs cream cheese, at room temp, drained

3-4 tbsp vanilla sugar

1/2 tsp green gel food colouring

Beat the butter on its own first, until smooth. Add the cream cheese and beat some more. Add the sugar to taste, and the green food colouring until you like the colour. Chill until needed (should be OK in the fridge for a day or so) / until the texture is good for decorating.

Assembly and decoration:

Two dark-green mini M+M type sweets

Cocoa powder

Build the dinosaur shape: I used the middle part of a round cake (baked in springform pan) for the bottom part of the body. Then made the top part of the body from most of the loaf cake (loaf pan). Most of the rest of the loaf cake became the head, and the edges of the round cake were good for the tail (naturally curved) and legs (matching pairs). A few gaps needed filling with offcuts, but in general it's good to stick to as few pieces as possible to avoid crumbs that get in the icing, and bits falling off. It worked surprisingly well.

When the shape looks OK, put a layer of icing all over to fill in small gaps. I prefer a relatively thin layer of icing so there were a few escaped chocolate crumbs in it, but I figured for a dinosaur's skin that was OK. And then I also sprinkled on some cocoa powder to add some more dinosaur-y texture / dirt anyway.

I used a couple of mini m+m type sweets for the eyes, and cut small holes in the icing through to the dark cake inside for nostrils. Finally, I stuck in the biscuit plates and spikes.

Wait til as close to serving as possible to decorate, especially to stick in the biscuits - I did it all the night before and the biscuits softened overnight, and a couple of them flopped over and had to be rescued with extra icing. Although actually I quite liked the taste of the softer biscuits.

Blackberry and apple cake

Everything is open now, and time has started to fly. We've had a beautiful patch of warm, sunny weather lately, but it feels like the prelude to autumn nonetheless - a touch of chill underneath. We made a couple of blackberry picking forays while still on holidays a few weeks ago... I realized now the season was drawing to a close already... I dreamed of blackberry and apple cake, and this one fitted my dream perfectly. So I went blackberry picking once more. 

 

I joined a new bee group, and there is a patch of brambles around the beehives, and you need a key to access where they are, so it's a good picking spot. The key wasn't where it was supposed to be, so I had to sneak in the back way - and the brambles were almost done. But I picked half a box. Turned out when I got back, I'd picked almost exactly the right amount for the cake. I'd also picked up the apples from a box outside someone's house.

 

for the cake: 

2 small dessert apples 

half a lemon 

150 g blackberries 

150 g butter 

150 g golden caster sugar (or half caster, half muscovado) 

3 eggs 

85 g plain flour 

1.5 tsp baking powder 

100 g ground hazelnuts (whole ones, ground)

 

for the crumble: 

50 g butter

50 g plain flour 

60 g golden caster sugar 

2 heaped tbsp rolled oats 

pinch of cinnamon (optional)

 

Heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a big loaf tin. 

 

Peel and quarter the apples, core them and then slice them thinly. Squeeze lemon juice over them, and then mix with the blackberries. 

 

Beat the sugar and butter together until light and smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time. 

 

Put the flour and baking powder together in a small bowl, add the ground hazelnuts, and mix well with a fork. Stir in to the mixture in two or three lots. 

 

Transfer the batter to the tin, smooth, and scatter the apple and blackberry mixture over the top, pushing some of the fruit lightly down into it. 

 

Make the crumble by rubbing the flour and butter together, and stirring in the sugar, oats and cinnamon. 

 

Scatter the crumble on top of the cake and bake for about an hour until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out moist but fairly clean.  Check after 30 and 45 min, and if the crumble browns on top too quickly, then cover with a piece of foil while the cake finishes cooking through.

 

Remove from the oven when done and let cool completely on a baking rack before removing from the tin and taking off the paper.

Mine took about 65 min to bake. The fruit dripped a little bit over the edge (my loaf tin was rather full) - might be worth lining the oven shelf underneath to catch sugary drips.

 

It was really really good though. The hazelnuts in the base are genius - they add so much depth of flavour and texture, and go really well with the blackberry and apple. I made a similar cake not long ago without the blackberries and hazelnuts - this one is superior (and didn't overflow my loaf tin quite as much).

S birthday cake 2021: Dulce de leche chocoflan

Another birthday! All our birthdays are in the winter, within a couple months. S's is the last of the winter, or the first of the year, and is well positioned to liven up February.

I'd had my eye on this recipe for ages. I basically usually make 2 cakes a year, for S and s birthdays... I bought a bundt tin specially, and had to buy dulce de leche and evaporated milk from an online peruvian / latin food store (evap seemingly especially hard to find round here?), but it was worth it - it was a fun recipe!

Little s helped me make it, and especially helped with the decoration. This is the only photo I have of the cake, but it worked! The inversion of the batters and the layers on slicing are so cool! And it was tasty - we like flan! Ours turned out more uniformly dark brown on the outside than the photo in the original recipe - perhaps because I decided to dust the tin with cocoa powder (I was so paranoid it wouldn't come out of the tin... although not enough to actually buy a specialist cooking spray) - but it was ok, it just made the layers more surprising when we sliced it!

For the flan:

380 g dulce de leche (i used 'la havana' from a jar)

354 ml evaporated milk (I bought it online as evap, then realized it was labelled condensed when just about to use it... but then noticed it was not sweetened, so I decided it was really evaporated - so confusing!)

115 g cream cheese, at room temp

1 tsp vanilla powder

pinch fine sea salt

5 large eggs

For the cake:

160 g plain flour

200 g sugar

50 g cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

85 g butter, cubed, at room temp

120 ml coffee, cooled

120 ml buttermilk

1 large egg

3/4 tsp vanilla powder

Heat oven to 180C. Prepare bundt tin by buttering the inside all over, being careful to get into all the nooks and crannies, and then dusting with cocoa powder.

To make the flan mix, blend up together the dulce de leche, evaporated milk, cream cheese, vanilla, and salt (I used a large bowl and a wand blender). Add in the eggs and blend until smooth.

To make the cake mix, mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, bicarb, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon with a fork. Add the butter and rub in with your fingers until the mixture resembles wet sand. In a jug, beat together the coffee, buttermilk, egg, and vanilla, then mix it into the flour-butter mix gradually. Beat as fast as you can for a full minute.

Pour the CAKE mix into the bundt tin, smoothing out the top with a spoon. Carefully ladle in the FLAN mix so you disturb the cake mix as little as possible. Put the filled bundt tin pan in a roasting tin large enough to fit it. Grease a piece of foil and place it greased side down onto the bundt tin, folding it over the edges to loosely seal it. Transfer to the oven, then pour cold water into the roasting tin to come up 2 to 3 inches.

Bake for 2 hours to 2 hours 15 min, checking for doneness after 1 hour 45 min, using a skewer inserted into the cake to make sure it’s baked through, with little to no crumbs sticking to the skewer when you pull it out. (mine was pretty much done at 1 h 45 - I gave it an extra 5-10 min but I don't think it needed it).

Take out of the oven very carefully. Remove the bundt tin carefully from the roasting tin and let it cool to room temperature (which took several hours) before placing it in the fridge to cool completely, at least a couple of hours.

When ready to serve, carefully run a knife around any edges that are sticking, invert onto a serving plate, and shake up and down gently until it comes out!

 

It took a long time to cool and chill so definitely make the day before you want to eat it. And remember to brew the coffee and get cream cheese and butter to room temp ahead of time as well.

I was so relieved it came out - suddenly realized when shaking up and down the fifth time or so that turning out a bundt is a wee bit stressful (it was the first time I'd used a bundt tin) - there is no hiding issues - no icing or anything - the decoration is all in the shape of the tin... But we made it, phew! s and me had fun decorating it...

Realized it had an insane variety of different dairy products in it: dulce de leche, evap, cream cheese, butter, buttermilk... Also realized I like buttermilk - had never bought it pure before, always imagined it would taste like butter because of the name, but it is more like a runny yoghurt. 

The chocoflan was beautiful and quite tasty: maybe I should make more flans. And will have to think of more things to do with that bundt tin now!

Chocolate cake

I bought a kilo of ceremonial grade (100%) chocolate to support a covid fundraiser for a permaculture cacao farm in Guatemala. It arrived a few months later and it’s a significant brick of slightly powdery, almost smoky chocolate. I don’t find it awesome for just snacking, but it makes a great hot beverage - the smokiness really comes through. The restaurant that organised the chocolate fundraiser sent this recipe through with the chocolate info and I thought it sounded worth a try - although the original was with 77% choc so I had to adapt...

106 g sugar

80 g butter

54 g 100% chocolate

2 eggs

Melt butter, sugar and chocolate in a double boiler. 

Meanwhile, set oven to 150C and butter a baking tin (I used a loaf tin for this amount - cake ended up about 1 in deep). Also break the eggs into a bowl and beat lightly.

When all is melted, add the eggs to the chocolate bowl and whisk. It may split but keep whisking - it will come together. When smooth, pour into prepared tin and bake for approx. 25 min (35 min for 5 egg version). Done when a sharp knife comes out clean. Take out and let rest in the tin until cool.

This was adapted from a version with 5 eggs, 200g butter, 200g sugar, and 200g 77% choc - that’s why the numbers are a bit weird. I also worked out for 3 eggs, which might have fit a little better in the tin: 120g butter, 159.6 g sugar, 80.4g 100% choc. Or for 5 eggs and 100% choc do 266g sugar and 134g choc. 

I wasn’t sure if it’d work with subbing 100% choc for 77% - had a feeling 100% wouldn’t be good for melting / cooking - but it worked really well!

Third Birthday Cake

Little S turned three on Tuesday. He is crazy about cars / vehicles at the moment, so this year he clearly had to have a car for his birthday cake. I thought about a fire engine, but it seemed like you'd have to have the colour, shape, writing etc bang on for it to look recognizable, and I wanted to allow myself a bit more leeway.

So I went for a dumper truck. Still a favourite, still easily recognizable, still a truck - but could be any colour I want, no writing needed, and somehow felt like it would still look ok even if the shape went a bit wrong.

The cake was this one, baked in a loaf tin. I cut it into three pieces: about a third from one end to make the front part (standing on the cut side), all the rest except a couple of inches to make the back part, and then the last piece to cut into six wheel shapes. Then I shaped the front, cut out the hopper, shaped the wheel beds and evened out the wheels.

The icing was this one. Instead of cinnamon, I added a few different powders to colour it: the icing on the back part of the truck is with freeze-dried raspberry powder, the icing on the front part is with acai powder, and the icing on the wheels is with cocoa. I considered a few other powder (spirulina or matcha for green; turmeric for yellow), but then realized it took quite a lot of powder for a get much colour and I more wanted it to taste nice...

The decorations are: mango-coconut balls for the load and lights, dried kiwi slices for the wheels, and raspberry-apple fruit 'spaghetti' for the writing, window shapes and stripes on the back part. It would have been best presented straight after decorating, but it looked ok the next morning.

It tasted good but yet again I made a sage birthday cake that failed to rise properly (it rose beautifully, and then dropped a lot). This time I had even decided to follow a proper cake recipe to the word to prevent this... Oh well, the icing works!

And, most importantly, S liked it and recognized it as a dumper truck. He got a yellow dumper truck from the 1950s from my dad so it all fit together perfectly.

Birthday cake 2020: poppyseed, lemon, yoghurt, apple cheese

I was thinking about S's birthday cake for a while, as usual. We had a good crop of walnuts this year so Plan A was to do a classic coffee and walnut cake. But then I stumbled on this cake (during my Anna Jones trawl), and it seemed to tick a load of boxes: we had a load of homemade apple cheese in the fridge; and the whole poppyseed-almond-lemon-yoghurt situation sounded divine. So this became the new Plan A. And I am glad it did - it was everything I hoped for (despite not being the prettiest cake ever - rustic charm though right?). I'd love to try it with other fruit cheeses - membrillo, that guava paste you get from Latin American shops, damson cheese... mmmm... Or the marzipan option!

70 ml rapeseed oil or melted butter plus a little extra (used sunflower oil)
250 g white spelt flour, plus a little extra for the tin (used plain flour)
1 tbsp baking powder
70 g golden caster sugar (used a mixture of caster and brown)
½ tsp fine sea salt
60 g poppy seeds
Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
2 medium eggs
350 ml yogurt or buttermilk (used yogurt - actually it was a mix of skyr and oat yoghurt)
250 g membrillo (quince paste), cut into tiny cubes (used apple cheese)
2 tbsp demerara sugar
20 g almonds, skin on, lightly toasted and chopped

Heat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7. Grease a springform baking tin, line the base and flour the sides.

Combine the flour, baking powder, caster sugar, salt, poppy seeds and lemon zest in a large bowl. In a separate smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs and the yogurt, then whisk in the oil. Add to the flour mixture and stir briefly, until just combined. Gently fold in two-thirds of the membrillo cubes until they are evenly distributed. Transfer the cake mixture to the prepared tin.

Arrange the remaining membrillo across the top in a pleasing pattern. Sprinkle with the demerara sugar, then the almonds. Bake for 20-25 min or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature.


Decorated with a little water icing made with icing sugar and lemon juice, and a sprinkling of poppyseeds.

One note: I don't think it's worth toasting the almonds before putting on top - they'd get nicely toasted enough just sitting on top of the cake while it's baking.

Previous S cakes: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011
Previous s cakes: 2019, 2018