11th Birthday cake part 2......a "Tatty Teddy" Cake...

As the older of the 2 Smallish Ones has a birthday that falls in the Summer Holidays, we always celebrate twice...once with friends...and cake number 1...and once with family...on the actual day...and of course, this means a second cake...

A Giant Cupcake for an 11th Birthday...

...I took my inspiration for this cake from Jo Wheatley's great new book "A Passion for Baking"...and a variation can also be found on Jo's Blog, "Jo's Blue Aga"...I got the book a month ago as a belated birthday present to myself!! That same day, both my Smallish Ones poured over the pages, ooohing and aaahing and choosing various bakes for us to try...one of which was this cake...

THE 10th Birthday Cake...!

Well here is another of the retrospective posts I mentioned back when I started out...This is the tale of how I made my daughter Emily's 10th birthday cake...it is the most complicated cake I have made to date..I got the idea from here... but instead of using the suggested bought cakes, I made my own!

Step 1 - Bake a cake!! I used a 2x20cm cake pans for this one, and I used a basic 4 egg Victoria Sandwich recipe...Em had requested a marble cake, so I halved the batter and added some cocoa powder to one half. I then sandwiched the 2 cakes together using my Basic Vanilla Buttercream (that was tweaked to make it a chocolate one by adding some cocoa).

 


Step 2 - I then trimmed the cakes, so that the sides were even and the top and bottom (when stood on it's side!) were flat.

Birthday Cakes...

I have always been keen to make my own Birthday Cakes, whether they are for the 2 smallish people in my life or one of the larger ones!!! I found some pictures of some of my earlier attempts and thought I would share them with you... 

A trial run...

The beautiful butterfly design is taken from here... which is an amazing website for busy people that want quick yet stunning cake design ideas...It was so simple to make, using just 1 large 25cm round cake...and some rather cunning cutting!!!

The real thing...

...and the sponge cake recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine's website, which is one of my most used recipe sources...