Sunday bakes - 'Many happy returns' marzipan lace cakes

Goodness it’s been a while since I last posted, happy New Year to all!

So since I last posted I’ve gotten old(er), so I thought for this post I would put up my birthday cakes. They were just little ones that I made for my office, but I tried out my hydrangea flower designs and my new lace mats to decorate them.

I chose a mixture of cinnamon, and vanilla and marzipan flavours, just to keep it simple and focused on the decoration (I left it a little late, so only had an evening, to get these done). As I was a little short on time I used my oven to help speed up the lace-drying process. You can get the sugar lace dried enough to take out in an hour, but you have to keep a watchful eye on the temperature and how long they are in there, otherwise it will discolour or even burn.

Aside from a few small burning mishaps where I got distracted by bowl licking and forgot to keep an eye on my lace, it's very easy to make. You can buy the speciality icing sugar in most baking shops, or online and after mixing with water to make an elastic, gummy paste you use a palette knife (or just the biggest, smoothest flat knife you have, I’ve used a normal dinner knife before) to ‘plaster’ the silicon mould. It’s important that you fully fill the mould, or your lace will have gaps but also be aware that any left-over icing between the dips will stay there, so you might have to spend a little time making it smooth, or trimming any strays afterwards. If you are in no hurry you can leave this to dry out over a few hours, or overnight, but as I mentioned I was in a rush so used the oven for a little while it was heating and cooling and the top oven while I was baking the cakes.

The flowers again require some specialist icing, bit this time I bought it ready made. I’ve opened this pack already but you can re-seal and store in the freezer if you don’t want to use it all at once. I used a hydrangea cutter with built in texture, added the centre part and painting with a dust icing paint.

There are two different cakes, Cinnamon flavour and vanilla and marzipan flavour. They both use vanilla sponge basic mixture so I’ll just add in alternatives for each when I get to that bit of the recipe.

Ingredients

140g Caster Sugar

40g butter

120g self-raising flour

A few drops of vanilla essence, or a tablespoon of cinnamon

120ml milk

1 egg

A block of marzipan

A block of fondant icing

Icing

250g Icing sugar

80g Stork spread
25ml milk

2tsp Cinnamon jam
1tbsp Ground Cinnamon

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until it’s as fluffy as you can get, this will be a little crumbly. Add the egg, essence (or cinnamon) and whisk up before slowly adding the flour, sifting through a sieve. Add the milk little by little to avoid lumps and whisk thoroughly before spooning into cake cases and baking for 20 minutes at about 180.

Ice with your preferred icing, I have chosen cinnamon butter cream with a small splodge of cinnamon jam for the cinnamon cakes and a layer or marzipan and then fondant icing for the vanilla and marzipan cakes, this is mostly to give a good surface for the lace.

Take these into work to thank everyone for being kind as you age and to buy you favours for the next year.