This weekend was Lara's third birthday and to celebrate, I made her this.
You have to admit that for my very first attempt at sugarcraft and fondant icing, it is pretty impressive huh? I'm enormously proud and Lara LOVED it!
The cake came from a recipe that the wonderful people of twitter pointed out to me for a madeira cake - I removed the lemon and replaced a few tablespoons of flour with cocoa powder to make a chocolate cake. I made three times the recipe which is a cake volume that is massively hard to stir and bake! In total the cake comprises 18 eggs, 1kg butter, 1.5kg flour, 1kg sugar, 1.5kg marzipan and about 2kg of icing. It is a heavy cake to say the least.
A cake of such epic proportions takes a long time to create at the best of times but when you have a 6 week old baby demanding attention in 15 minute bursts all day it is even trickier. The cake took me 10 days from start to finish and I just did bits whenever I could find a small 5 minute slot in my day.
The sugar work is done using Regalice and a number of push-down cutters. Cake glue and cake smoothers have become my friends. The finishing touches were put on with some food colouring and a paintbrush. And no, the figurines aren't my creation... they are plastic!
I hope I haven't now set myself a precedent of 1 tier for every year of Lara's life because I'm not sure the foundations of the house can take the weight.
.jpg)
I really enjoyed my first foray into cake decorating. Now I just need to find some more excuses for cake.
You have to admit that for my very first attempt at sugarcraft and fondant icing, it is pretty impressive huh? I'm enormously proud and Lara LOVED it!
The cake came from a recipe that the wonderful people of twitter pointed out to me for a madeira cake - I removed the lemon and replaced a few tablespoons of flour with cocoa powder to make a chocolate cake. I made three times the recipe which is a cake volume that is massively hard to stir and bake! In total the cake comprises 18 eggs, 1kg butter, 1.5kg flour, 1kg sugar, 1.5kg marzipan and about 2kg of icing. It is a heavy cake to say the least.
A cake of such epic proportions takes a long time to create at the best of times but when you have a 6 week old baby demanding attention in 15 minute bursts all day it is even trickier. The cake took me 10 days from start to finish and I just did bits whenever I could find a small 5 minute slot in my day.
The sugar work is done using Regalice and a number of push-down cutters. Cake glue and cake smoothers have become my friends. The finishing touches were put on with some food colouring and a paintbrush. And no, the figurines aren't my creation... they are plastic!
I hope I haven't now set myself a precedent of 1 tier for every year of Lara's life because I'm not sure the foundations of the house can take the weight.
.jpg)
I really enjoyed my first foray into cake decorating. Now I just need to find some more excuses for cake.
