Victoria Sponge Birthday Cake

My Nigella cake stand got it's first outing recently and for a special occasion too! Boy was 6 years old. I've no idea how he got to that age so quickly, hasn't helped my broodiness one bit! I'm always a little bit fazed by celebration cakes as I have a deadline to meet (so no time for Bad Things to Happen) and it has to look at least halfway nice. Boy wanted me to make him a cake which I was secretly pleased about as he is very into Power Rangers and I thought he would prefer one of the themed cakes from the supermarket. I did look at them in a moment of desperation but the use by date was over 3 weeks away. There is something not quite right about a cake that keeps that long in my opinion. Sinister, I tell thee. He calls any sponge with jam and butter-cream 'birthday cake' so i thought that would be a good place to start. The recipe was from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell. From her instructions it says to bake it all in one in a 9cm deep baking tin which I don't have and to be honest, I don't think you need. All the mixture would have fitted in my 5cm deep tin I'm sure but I did it in two halves anyway as I wanted a nice flat top for the icing.

Victoria Sponge Cake

225g unsalted butter, diced (or spread suitable for baking, I prefer this)
225g golden caster sugar
225g self raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder (I'm presuming it means level ones)
4 eggs (book says medium but I always buy large and it doesn't seem to make a difference)
100ml milk

• Preheat oven to 170c fan/190c/Gas 5. Grease and base line one 20cm x 5cm deep tin, preferably with a removable base or two 20cm sandwich tins.
• Cream the butter and sugar together until light
• Add the eggs and milk and mix until incorporated
• Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and mix until smooth
• Transfer to tin(s) and smooth the top
• Bake for 50 mins for whole cake and 30 mins for sandwich layers, until a skewer in the centre comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge to loosen and leave to cool.

Filling and icing
50g raspberry seedless jam
55g unsalted butter, cubed
110g icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp boiling water
1 pack ready-to-roll white icing, enough to cover 1 x 20cm cake

• Trim the domes from the cake layers so they fit together as neatly as possible. I used the cut sides innermost to leave the flat base at the top.
• Spread the cut side of one layer with the jam
  
• To make the butter-cream whisk the butter, icing sugar and boiling water together until fluffy. Spread this on the cut side of the other layer and sandwich together.
• Using about 3/4 of the white icing, roll out into a circle slightly bigger than the top of the cake. Spread the icing with warmed jam and smooth onto the top of the cake then trim round the edge with a sharp knife.

Then you can decorate with icing pens, writing icing or whatever else. I used the rest of the icing and made it red with some food colouring paste (liquid would make it too runny) and cut out a number 6 freehand. I do have some number cutters but they weren't quite big enough and to be honest I was rushing at this point as Z was due back from school and I wanted it ready for when he came back. It's not hugely artistic but was a lot better once the candles were on.

Nigella's Birthday Custard Sponge - Supersized!

Another birthday cake, my mother-in-law's this time. As I still wasn't feeling well I wanted to make something I had already done before to minimise chances of Bad Things Happening. I made this for my son's 5th birthday earlier in the year and had been looking for an excuse to make it again, it really is gorgeous.

BIRTHDAY CUSTARD SPONGE CAKE

200g plain flour
3 tablespoons Bird’s custard powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
4 eggs
225g soft butter
200g caster sugar
2-3 tablespoons milk

Make sure everything you need is at room temperature before you start. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180C, and butter and line two 20cm sandwich tins.

Put all of the above ingredients except the milk into a food processor. Process to a smooth batter, and then add the milk a tablespoon at a time to make a soft dropping consistency. Divide between the two cake tins and bake for 20 minutes. The cakes will have risen and feel spookily puffy; this is because of the cornflour in the custard powder.

Let the tins sit on a cooling rack for 5 minutes and then turn them out on to the rack peeling away the paper.

For the buttercream filling:

125g icing sugar
4 teaspoons Bird’s custard powder
75g soft unsalted butter
1 ½ teaspoons boiling water

Process the icing sugar and custard powder to get rid of any lumps, and then add the butter, processing again to make the buttercream come together. Feed the boiling water down the funnel with the motor running to make the filing easier to spread. Then sandwich the cooled sponges together with the custardy buttercream.

For the chocolate icing:

60ml water
2 tablespoons golden syrup
125g caster sugar (or use 50g if using milk chocolate)
175g dark chocolate
1 pot hundreds and thousands

Combine the water, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan, stirring to dissolve over a low heat. Let it come to the boil and take it off the heat.

Break up the chocolate into small pieces if you are not using chocolate buttons and then add to the pan, swirling it around to cover in the hot liquid. Leave to melt for a few minutes, and then whisk the icing to make it smooth and shiny. Pour over the buttercream filled cake, letting it drip down the sides, and then sprinkle generously with the hundreds and thousands before the icing sets.

Prong with candles, light them and sing!

Now I don't know if it's because my processor was still objecting strongly to having an orange to squish up for the muffins but I had a bit of a disaster with the first layer. I made up one whole quantity and put it in a 10" sqaure tin, it did the whole 'spookily puffy' thing which is quite scary as they do go quite big but settle once they are out of the oven. Anyhow, mine settled and it had big huge dents in it! I'm sure I mixed it for long enough. I was going to do it all again but I only had the 8 eggs needed for the cake so had to put up with it as it was. I wasn't chancing it going wrong for the top layer and did it with the hand mixer instead. As you can see from the pic it is way better than the first and had a lot better texture. The sponge is very light and it is quite tricky to get it out of the tin withough damaging the sides of it so I left it to cool for longer too.For the buttercream I made double the amount from the original recipe but stuck to the original for the chocolate topping as it made loads last time and it was all running all over the cake board. I left it to cool this time and spread it on with a spatula, I just can't do the decorative 'running down the sides' thing. As always I had a cake frill to hand, I'm getting very predictable!

This is the one I made for my son, I decorated it with white and milk chocolate buttons.

Iced Lemon Curd Birthday Cake

It was my grandad's birthday last Saturday. There was some debate amongst my older rellies about whether he was 92 or 93 this year. I don't know myself, you kind of have to take peoples word for that sort of thing don't you? Anyhow, I made him a cake. The recipe was based on Delia's Iced Lemon Curd Layer Cake. I have made it before and it is lovely but it ended up as just a sandwich cake, there was no way I could have cut the layers in half as they were too thin and it would have totally fallen apart. I am usually very good at doing as I'm told in recipes but there is something about Delia that makes me want to rebel. This recipe was too small anyway, as birthdays call for Big Cake!!

I made the whole quantity of mixture in Delia's recipe and put it all into one 20x24cm tin, then when that was done made another one as I only have one tin that size (don't feel sorry for me, I have far too many baking things.) While they were cooling I made the lemon curd, which is one of the easiest, most satisfying jobs ever! Shove a load of stuff in a bowl, set it on a saucepan and walk away from it for 20 minutes. There was just enough to sandwich the two halves together. I had to trim the bottom layer a bit so they fitted together. All going well so far. Then I made the icing to go on top. I doubled the amount but it wasn't quite enough and it had started to dry with bald patches around the edges. I quickly made some more and tried to fill in the gaps but it was starting to look a bit lumpy where the first lot met the second so I covered it in 100's and 1000's and it looked ok. By this time it was 1am so I didn't really have time to make any major mistakes. I had bought a cake frill to go round the outside, I love those things they cover a multitude of ugly cake moments with the minimum of effort and all for 70p.

As I said before I just don't do decorating at all so shop bought plastic thingies and sprinkles etc are my saviour. Some candles were put on after but we didn't light them as it would have set off the smoke alarms at the old folks home and we didn't want that, it wouldn't have made us very popular.

So there we go. Not as sophisticated as Delia's layer cake but everyone liked it.