Let them eat cake! (It is their birthday after all)

I started to write this recipe on Monday but wow it has been a crazy week! Bakes after bakes, cake after cake. 
But here it is! Better late than never! 

Birthday cakes are one of my favourite things to make, I just love how every one is going to be different and you never know what you're going to be asked to bake. I recently had an order of a chocolate and vanilla marble cake with owl decoration, I was pretty excited about this one cos it meant sculpting some form of owl related model. It's so fun just being able to go to town with the decoration and actually using your hands to physically create something. So here's the recipe and a guide to all things icing! 

Ingredients:
8oz self raising flour 
8oz butter
8oz caster sugar 
4 eggs 
1 tsp vanilla essence 
1oz cocoa powder 

Method: 
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line two 8 inch circular tins. 
Beat together the butter and the sugar until they become light and fluffy and creamy in colour. Add the eggs one st a time. Then carefully fold in the flour until all the mixture is combined, it should be a pale yellow colour at this point. 
Next split the mix into two bowls-one will become vanilla and the other will become chocolate. Once split, add the vanilla essence into one bowl and the cocoa powder into another. You can add a little milk into the chocolate batter if it becomes very thick here. 
The next thing you need to do is to scoop a spoonful of each mixture into the cake tins one at a time and keep going until the tins are filled. It should be very random as this will create the marble effect after the bake. Then smooth the mix down a little with a palette knife or a spoon and pop in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 
Once baked, leave in the tins to cool a little before removing and placing onto a cooling rack to cool completely. 

The next stage is to prepare your filling and the decoration! 

Ingredients:
8oz icing sugar 
4oz softened butter 
1tsp vanilla essence 

1 pack of ready to roll white icing 
Food colouring of your choice

Method: 
Beat together the icing sugar, butter and essence until it becomes light and fluffy. You an taste a little here and if it's too buttery simply add a little more icing sugar or essence. Then spread the butter over one cake and pop the other cake on top. Make sure you leave a little butter cream aside here as this will help to stick the doing to the cake later on. Once the cake is assembled, stand back and look to make sure the cake is flat, if it isn't simply trim the top with a serated knife. Now spread the remaining butter over the top and the sides of the cake. It just needs to be a very thin layer as it will help the icing to stick. 

Once you've picked your colourings, it's time to colour the icing. Take about a third of the icing and put it to one side-this will be used to make your owl later. 
Colour the remaining two thirds with your desired colour to cover the cake with, I chose pink here. Keep adding drops of colouring and kneading the icing until it is fully combined into your desired colour. If you want to save time here, you can buy packs of coloured icing so you're ready to go! 

Once your icing is coloured, roll it out to a few millimetres thick, but make sure it's big enough to cover your cake! There's nothing more annoying than putting the icing on top of your cake and finding out it's not big enough!
Carefully roll the icing onto your rolling pin, then unroll it on the cake.
Smooth the icing across the top of the cake and carefully ease it smooth along the sides.
Trim the excess icing, leaving a small border and press smooth against the side of the cake.
Using a cake smoother, or just your hands, press evenly across the top and sides of the cake to push out any air bubbles and to seal it.
If you get any cracks, don't worry about it, simply rub the icing with the palm of your hand and the heat will mould the icing back together.

So for my owl topper, I used the following website which has a pretty awesome tutorial! They are amazing!
http://bronniebakes.com/2012/07/18/fondantowl/


And voila!
Birthday Cake 101!

 Happy baking! Let me know how you get on, as always!

 Charley.

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