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.

Sunday bakes - 'They don't make egg-shaped moulds' easter cake

For Easter sunday I wanted to make a 'show stopper' and what better shape for Easter than an egg. But unfortunately they don't seem sell egg shaped cake moulds, so I had  improvise with a pudding dish. 
Whilst this cake lasted long enough to eat, the bottom half was starting to look a little bulbous, I think there is a good reason why there aren't egg-shaped cakes. 
So make this cake if you are planning on eating is quickly (in the next few days).

Ingredients
Cake mix - make 2 batches, each with the following:
120g/4.5oz Self-raising flour
140g/5oz Caster sugar
pinch of salt
40g/1.5oz stork/butter
120ml milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp flavouring
Marzipan
Fondant icing
Icing lace powder
Black cherry jam

Method
For each of the cake halves beat the sugar and butter togegther until light and fluffy, then add the egg and beat again. Sift in the flour and mix gently at first, then gradually add the milk, salt, and the flavouring, beat togegther to make a light sponge batter. For the top layer I added vanilla flavour but for the bottom I added almond, to go with the cherry jam and marzipan.

Pour one batch of cake mix into a pudding dish, lined with buttered tin foil and cover with some more tin foil with a pleat in. Put into a roasting tin half filled with water and bake on a low heat until it is cooked all the way through (use the skewer test to check). Take the tin foil off the top for the last 10 minutes of cooking to crisp up the top, it will help keep the structure of the cake strong. Do this for both halves of the cake.

Once the cake has cooled tip them out onto a plate, put one small side down on the plate, cover with jam and then invert the other side and place on top. The pudding dish will have had a flat bottom so this should balance.

Cover the now egg-shaped cake in jam, then a thin layer of marzipan before putting on the fondant icing. I've found that rolling out the marzipan and fondant onto cling film will make transferring the rolled out icing onto the cake much easier and the surface much smoother. You can also rub down the surface to smooth out any folds without getting too sticky. 

I have a collection of the powdered icing paints, but you can mix them with water to make icing paints. I mixed up three colours and painted them over the surface to make a bright watercolour effect. 

You can buy the silicone mould for the icing lace online as well as the special icing sugar. you mix up the powder with water and spread over the mould, taking care to scrape off as much excess as possible. 

It will dry out overnight or over a few hours but you can speed up the process by placing in a very cool oven. Don't leave in the oven for too long because it will become brittle. 

Peel out of the mould and lay over the cake. I ran pieces of wire down one of the pieces and folded up to make a bow to sit on top. 

Happy Easter bakers!