Tiers of Joy

Weddings are the happiest occasions, love and joy, champagne and.... cake! Who could ask for more!  There I was toasting to the engagement of good friends at a Christmas party when, after a few drinks, it popped out.... "I could make your cake!" 

I was, of course, really excited to be able to give a three tiered cake as a gift, but it's not a small ask, especially because it would be my first time making a gluten free cake and no pressure, it's just the most important cake in a girls life! Luckily, apart from the gluten free request, the bride was quite relaxed about how it could be, but I had more expectations on myself to make it as good as it could be.

It actually wasn't the first wedding cake I've made, but unlike riding a bike, it's as daunting the second as the first time! The one thing that did fill us with confidence was that in the test version of the Gluten-free rich fruit cake turned out beautifully and we knew that the Marshmallow fondant that we used in the first wedding cake we made a few years ago would be a real winner! 

When it came to baking and decorating the cake it was hectic but fun (apart from the beginning of the icing when my hubbie thought the marshmallow would never become unstuck from his hands!) and the cake, although not perfectly evenly shaped, went down a treat. 

I felt very honoured to be able to be part of my friends' special day and delighted to kick off their marital bliss with a moist, brandy laced fruit cake!

"Surprise" Chocolate Cake

Disappointing "4" cake

Creating fabulous culinary creations doesn't work so well if the recipients don't enjoy the food, so we often tame the chilli in a dish or leave the steak on for a few more minutes past a medium rare! We learnt a lesson about catering to the tastes of others a few years ago. My hubbie spent all day decorating a fabulous cake for the 4th birthday of our nephew. Most 4 year old would be pretty impressed, I would have thought, with a cake in the shape of a 4, with a road, real cars and road signs?! However, we realised the hard way that Amadeus was not a big fan of the coloured frosting. So disappointed that he didn't want to eat it until every trace of the orange icing had been removed.

"Surprise" Chocolate Cake

I decided to make the "Surprise Chocolate Cake" from this month's MasterChef Magazine but to make sure it was palatable for all our dinner guests, the surprising thing about how my chocolate cake looked was that mine was missing a segment of the pink pomegranate icing. The cake, with raspberry and chocolate chip surprises, was so moist and I was also surprised by how pink the icing became with the natural pomegranate juice. I was really happy with my creation, and my youngest critic was adamant right up to when I was serving up the cake, that he was to have the un-frosted section!

Bumper Birthday

Both of my cousin's kids have their birthday in the same month and for a few years now we've made the cake for the youngest whose birthday falls earlier in the month. Last year, however, he declared that he "wanted a different cake" than the very cool (we thought) "4" chocolate cake with orange coloured butter icing, and decoration. Turns out he is not a fan of anything but chocolate cake that looks like chocolate (and not fluorescent orange!) This year we ended up baking a cake for both of them for their joint birthday party.

As fortune would have it, I just received a copy of Fiona Cairns' Bake & Decorate from a competition run by Chris Dreyfus' Silver and Claret  and the Family Chocolate Cake looked perfect for the chocolate lover birthday boys. It's a very succulent cake which I have now perfected after making the recipe a few times for enough mixture for the two cakes - a figure eight and a figure five.

My hubbie loves decorating cakes and took on the icing of the racing track figure eight with a cocoa butter cream, whilst I stuck with a chocolate ganache (from the chocolate celebration cake, also in Bake & Decorate) for the plainer 5. It was the first time I'd made ganache frosting, but it was quite easy to work with, as I just let it drip down the sides, and spent more time wiping around the cake!

The cakes were a great success and both birthday boys were very excited and impressed, and they both tasted fantastic!