Baking birthday cakes is the most fun!
Melissa is my lovely sister in law (you honestly will never meet a more generous person in your life – (and she’s a nurse too!) and it’s her birthday. It just so happens to be her fiancé, Luke’s birthday just a few days earlier and as it was his 30th Melissa asked me to make a cake for him. How could I refuse? Milly asked me to make him a star themed cake (as he’s a star) which was really cute. But I couldn’t make a cake for Luke and not for Melissa, so I did a mini one for her too!
Luke’s cake
For starters, Luke is a West Ham football supporter, so the colours of the cake are the team’s colours.
I think it works really well. Milly originally asked me to make a chocolate cake but after a random comment about his favourite cake the week before his birthday, she quickly asked me to change it so under all that icing is a really moist Carrot cake and the frosting is cream cheese frosting which is just perfect! Jane Curran the Food Editor on Woman & Home always said that the only way to get cream cheese frosting just right is to use full fat Philadelphia. Use anything else and it will be too runny! So that’s what I did! I couldn’t leave the off cuts alone. Don’t you just love it when you have to level a domed cake once it’s been baked and can eat it all up?
Melissa’s cake
For Milly, I knew it had to be a chocolate cake. I wanted to do something different so I made my favourite devils chocolate cake, but filled it with a raspberry butter cream. The flavouring came from a raspberry-flavoured icing sugar from Squires.co.uk. It worked well with the chocolate cake, but I think it could have done with being a little bit pinker, but as the flavouring was all natural there was no point in adding food colourings, and it tasted great!
The design was simple. It was a cake in the shape of a err well cake!, complete with candles made from icing. I wish I had made the candles a few days earlier as they were a bit difficult to make and handle on the same day. The icing loosely covered the top of the cake to look like a dripping butter cream then the wording was added. The candles were then inserted and that was that.
Both Melissa and Luke loved their cakes. And I loved making them!
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How do you do your writing so neat? It amazes me! I am totally addicted to your website!
Rachel
X
Ah thanks Rachel. You’ve made my day!
For these cakes I used cutters. The letters on Luke’s cake were made with cutters from Muji.
See the cutters here- http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?V=1&Sec=11&Sub=46&PID=5672
The moment I saw them I had to have them. They’re a really good size and font design. Different from any I have seen anywhere else. At £19.95 they were an investment but I have used them so much since they were a great buy.
For Melissa’s cake the lettering was made using tappits. Tappits look like rulers with the letters cut out. You have to roll out icing really thin and then press the tappit letter out. The icing is then stuck inside the letter cutter. To get it out you have to snap it as if you were snapping the end of a ruler on a table. There’s a knack to it ( I feel a new post coming on!) The icing letter then shoots across the work surface and you simply re-position it and leave it to dry. Then it’s ready to be positioned on the cake.
See the tappits here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alphabet-and-numbers-cutter-set/dp/B001SSD5L4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1330286650&sr=8-4)
I hope this helps and thanks for your lovely comment
EmmaMT
Thanks so much for your reply (again) I’ve been looking everywhere for those big cutters too!
I love that I’ve found your website your blogs are so interesting!
X
Thanks Rachel. That’s so nice of you to say.
Hi Emma, just found your website today and now my 11″ Madeira cake is baking as we speak. Do you have a recipe for carrot cake? I don’t need the frosting as I shall be icing it for a wedding cake. I’m hoping to bake a 9″ cake
Hello,
I hope your 11″ cake turned out beautifully. I don’t have a carrot cake unfortunately. I always use Mich Turner’s one from one of her wedding cake books.
EmmaMT
Emma my cake turned out perfect. Thoroughly cooked but still so moist. Was so good I made a 12″ chocolate Madeira too. So glad I found your site. The cakes turned out lovely and deep and no doming or sinking. Thanks for the brilliant ingredients charts. I will def be baking them again
Thanks Sue. That’s so good to hear.
EmmaMT