First sale: 60th birthday cake

I am back! In a new kitchen and with the dream kitchen tool:

Early christmas present

It has not been used yet but will get it's baptism this weekend, when I bake for a little get together.

This week, it's all about the first cake that I sold. 

A friend asked me to bake a cake for her mum 60th birthday. We agreed on a yogurt cake with vanilla buttercream. I used the following recipes for a cake for about 20 people:

For 20 persons minimum:- 4 pots of yogurt
- 4 yogurt pots of sugar
-12 yogurt pots of flour
-12 eggs
- 28g baking powder
- 3 pots of oil

And I used this buttercream recipe for filling, covering and borders: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basicbuttericing_73263

I used two layer of buttercream to cover the cake.

For the borders I decided to use two different style . 

The bottom one was great to make it neater. I used this tip:

For the top one I used a close star tip, and in the same way it helped to make it neater especially on the edge. 

  

The yogurt cake make a crust that can be scratchy (very technical term here!). 

For the roses I decided to use shop bought buttercream as I thought it would be firmer and easier. Well it wasn't... Once I had mixed in the icing it was quite loose and roses were not holding. I tried putting it in fridge but wasn't having it... Then I checked internet and found a tutorial that was mentioning adding icing sugar. And it worked great, after 2 frustrating hours I was able to make roses. 

I used this tutorial on you tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YKzh8jWJQY

Was quite proud of the result!

Week 11, part 1: Victoria sponge

Victoria sponge

This weekend was a bitter sweet bake.

I was baking a cake to take to a friend's house as there were doing a get together before moving out of the area.
Sweet because it was an occasion to see friends that I had not seen for some times, and bitter because I am sad to get further away from my good Irish friend!

I decided to do a Victoria sponge as I felt a classic was suited to the occasion and it fitted very well with her antiques cups.

The recipes from the book call for beating butter and sugar first before adding eggs little at a time. I decided to use a wooden spoon to avoid curdling which worked until I added too much egg at the time. As I was aware that it might happen, I was quick to respond to the emergency and added a bit of flour before putting the last of the eggs. Disaster averted!
I was worried that I hadn't beat in enough air so I have to confess, I added a bit of baking powder...
But it's still a beautiful Victoria sponge isn't it?

Week 10, part 2: Birthday cake and icing

 Birthday cake and icing

This week was my lovely sister in law birthday. We were all invited to the restaurant and I decided to surprise her with a little birthday cake.
I got some help from Tboy but he was not happy that he could not get to eat it straight away!

I made a simple yogurt cake (recipe her: http://theweeklybaker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/week-7-part-2-icing-and-yoghurt-cake.html) then filled it and covered it with dolce de leche (caramel sauce). I then covered it with marzipan as I love the almond taste and did a number of icing decoration. I used moulds, cutters and made some roses.

Turned out fairly nice although I still need to get better at making flowers and smooth covering of the cake.