I spent a good few hours last week making a Christening cake for a great nephew on my husband's side, Jayden Liam. It was a work of love and I thoroughly enjoyed almost all of it(there always has to be a small drama doesn't there?). I actually baked the cake at the home of J a good friend of mine . My poor old cooker is going a bit senile and sometimes doesn't remember what is expected of it when we turn the knob to gas mark 5, 6 or whatever. Mealtimes have to be unhurried if you want things to be cooked through to the centre or browned on top. J has a spiffy double oven aga type affair and a dedicated cake room! So instead of suffering the indignities of being squashed into my sad old cooker the cakes were each given their own dedicated space and were cooked to perfection .
J also lent me a good deal of her equipment to make my life a lot easier. I do have some cake decorating bits and bobs but nothing like this cornucopia of kit. Having a set of miniature circle cutters to use was a huge step up from searching the house for just the right diameter toothpaste lid/pen cap to cut out 'jam tarts' for the teddy bear's picnic I was creating.
These miniature items of food were the most fun to make, tiny 'honey' sandwiches, jam tarts and an iced Victoria sandwich cake. So very cute! I was also pleased with the small glasses of cola, although another time I would tint the glass green/black rather than blue/black.
I had been taking inspiration for the bears from a cake decorating book. But no matter how many times I tried they never looked quite like the one in the book. I still have no idea which proportions I was not getting right. In the end I abandoned the book and went my own way and was happy with the end result of my hybrid bear. The bears had been another source of head scratching. After a long time of experimenting I was still far away from mixing a lovely honey colour sugar paste for the bears. I pushed on and finally got close, or as close as I was going to and started to model the first bear. The next day I nipped out to buy a couple of further supplies and there staring me in the face was a pack of ready mixed fondant in 'Teddy Bear Brown'!!!!!!
The cake was very well received and despite my intolerance to citrus I had to taste a slice as the (inner) cake it's self got rave reviews (thanks J for the recipe-a delicate lemon sponge with one fill lemon butter cream and the second raspberry jam, with a lemon syrup brushed over the outer surfaced, scrummy-yummy ). The migraine was worth it.
