Tag: cake

Baby Cake

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking
Sugar paste baby with edible silk-lustred dandelion seed heads

This week’s cake is a chocolate sponge layered with blackberry and raspberry compote buttercream with fresh chopped berries mixed in for added lushness.

It was crumb-coated, covered in fondant then dotted with royal icing to give it surface texture and interest.

The topping – sugared dandelion seed head (picked from my back garden, well away from car exhausts, no insecticides or weed killer).

The flower was molded using sugar paste and the baby was formed in a silicone mold that I got from Amazon.

I really enjoyed the icing. I haven’t done it for a while and need some practice!

Baby is perfect for a christening cake topper.

Royal Icing

400g Icing sugar

15g dried egg white

Approx. 5 TBSP water

Beat the ingredients together with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes. The consistency depends on what you want to do with the icing. Mine formed firm peaks with some yield in them.

If you make too much, you can freeze it for a month; just give it a good beat when it returns to room temperature.

The baby mold arrived with a separate wings mold.

Lustre dust drizzling across the top of the cake gives it a twinkly, delicate sheen.

Ganache

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

Movember is a big thing in Ireland, and UK, as well I think. It’s the month where the chaps grow a moustache for charity to help raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. I sponsored a couple of guys to have their legs waxed.

There were two baking fund raisers – I made the chocolate biscuit cake Christmas pudding for one of them (last post) and a rich sponge with brandy buttercream filling topped with white chocolate ganache with chocolate stars, chocolate silver balls and a ring of Malteasers for the latest one.

Ganache

Ganache is very easy to make. It’s just double cream and chocolate – generally a ratio of 2 choc to 1 cream.

Weigh the cream to tare it in grams then break the chocolate into a bowl.

Pour the cream into a saucepan and bring it to the boil; stir it so it doesn’t burn and stick to the pan.

When it’s broiling and roiling, take it off the heat and pour over the chocolate. Leave for 30s or so.

Stir until it’s melted and blended together. Let it cool a bit if it’s on the hotter side of warm then use it on your cake.

On the way in there was some minor damage.

S

Some of the Malteasers got dislodged but were quickly pressed back into position and a few stars got broken.

My cakes sales (the two together) raised nearly €100 so delighted they were enjoyed and raised money.

Wind Rose

Spoon Graphic blog posted a free set of treasure map assets for Illustrator. There’s an Illustrator tutorial here:Wind Rose Compass that’s easy to follow and the end result works well with the map; this is how mine turned out: