Valentine's Day Cakes
Another belated Valentine's post! I made these for my boyfriend for Valentine's Day, after which we went away to Wilsons Promontory for a week so I've only just got back to internet land now. Here's the preview:
The original plan was to do a large heart-shaped cake, but after being unable to find a heart-shaped tin (that didn't blow the budget) I found some littler ones. I teased out the ideas over the week before V-Day, gaining inspiration from numerous places (and inventing half of it as I went along, to the point that some ideas only became fully-fledged as I was making the cakes). As it turned out, I made my original plan the centrepiece, and did 4 other (slightly) smaller cakes. As the week went on, I decided to do each of the four cakes different, and to incorporate a heart shape into the decoration of each. I was unable to escape a few more fails, but as a whole it went better than my other attempts. But the main thing is it tasted sensational. All the cakes are chocolate with white choc chips. The recipe includes golden syrup in it which is such a hit with the folks. It turned out much better than the last time I used this chocolate cake recipe (the cricket cake) as this time it was really moist. The only part I didn't like was the black fondant, as I found it has a funny after-taste, but my boyfriend loved it so I guess it's a matter of opinion! It took me about 8 hours to assemble these. It was all a bit rushed as I was working to a deadline, and it shows!
Oh, and I apologise for the photo quality. The lighting conditions were terrible.
Without further ado:
I ended up baking 14 of these at 12am the night before. I only used 11 for the cakes, but wanted to have some extras just in case. And, well, didn't really wanna waste the cake mixture, either.
To the doggies went the spoils.
I lopped the tops off of each and sandwiched two together (3 for the centrepiece) with cream coloured pink and flavoured with strawberry essence. I'd love to say that this was to match the Valentine's theme, but really I just had leftover strawberry cream from some chocolate powder puffs I made and didn't want to waste it! The left over cake tops I blended into cake crumbs - so now I just have to find a good recipe for chocolate cake crumbs!
This was the first one I completed and it literally had no direction before the day. I had planned to cover it in chocolate icing (2 were going to be chocolate and the other two buttercream for no good reason) and had no idea where to go from there. I drizzled melted white chocolate over it, then as a spur of the moment thing decided to draw two hearts into it, each in an opposite direction. It saddened me that a few people said that this was their favourite, as it really was the least effort to do!
Next came the strawberry covered cake whose design was inspired by a larger one in a recipe book given to me by my boyfriend's mum, with some alterations. This one is buttercream covered, strawberries on top (pre-dusted with icing sugar to give them a glaze), chocolate sheets around the outside (can you believe Wendy's charge 80c per rectangle when they are so easy to make yourself?) and a red ribbon to give it the final touch.
Then I started with the fondant. Oh the glorious glorious gel food colouring. I didn't have to struggle with the pale, limp fondant that liquid food colouring gave. Save for the red fondant, that took and insane amount of colouring and I still didn't get the bright red I wanted!
Cake number 3 is ladybug themed. The heart here comes in the form of a heart-shaped leaf, which the naughty ladybugs have been chomping on. The leaf stem also comes down the side of the cake to form a heart. Had some fondant failage here, but I was under pressure to get it done before my boyfriend arrived so I had no time for perfection.
Cake 4 is bees. The idea was that the bee trail would form heart shapes. I had serious piping failure. My piping nozzle was clearly not thin enough (note to self: buy proper equipment) and my royal icing was probably the wrong consistency.
Piping failage also extended to the centrepiece cake. This one has a buttercream layer under the fondant. I fluted some white frills. Was supposed to pipe around the top edge, but after my other piping failage, I decided to leave it.
Final shots:
Originally posted here @ bakebakebake.
The original plan was to do a large heart-shaped cake, but after being unable to find a heart-shaped tin (that didn't blow the budget) I found some littler ones. I teased out the ideas over the week before V-Day, gaining inspiration from numerous places (and inventing half of it as I went along, to the point that some ideas only became fully-fledged as I was making the cakes). As it turned out, I made my original plan the centrepiece, and did 4 other (slightly) smaller cakes. As the week went on, I decided to do each of the four cakes different, and to incorporate a heart shape into the decoration of each. I was unable to escape a few more fails, but as a whole it went better than my other attempts. But the main thing is it tasted sensational. All the cakes are chocolate with white choc chips. The recipe includes golden syrup in it which is such a hit with the folks. It turned out much better than the last time I used this chocolate cake recipe (the cricket cake) as this time it was really moist. The only part I didn't like was the black fondant, as I found it has a funny after-taste, but my boyfriend loved it so I guess it's a matter of opinion! It took me about 8 hours to assemble these. It was all a bit rushed as I was working to a deadline, and it shows!
Oh, and I apologise for the photo quality. The lighting conditions were terrible.
Without further ado:
I ended up baking 14 of these at 12am the night before. I only used 11 for the cakes, but wanted to have some extras just in case. And, well, didn't really wanna waste the cake mixture, either.
To the doggies went the spoils.
I lopped the tops off of each and sandwiched two together (3 for the centrepiece) with cream coloured pink and flavoured with strawberry essence. I'd love to say that this was to match the Valentine's theme, but really I just had leftover strawberry cream from some chocolate powder puffs I made and didn't want to waste it! The left over cake tops I blended into cake crumbs - so now I just have to find a good recipe for chocolate cake crumbs!
This was the first one I completed and it literally had no direction before the day. I had planned to cover it in chocolate icing (2 were going to be chocolate and the other two buttercream for no good reason) and had no idea where to go from there. I drizzled melted white chocolate over it, then as a spur of the moment thing decided to draw two hearts into it, each in an opposite direction. It saddened me that a few people said that this was their favourite, as it really was the least effort to do!
Next came the strawberry covered cake whose design was inspired by a larger one in a recipe book given to me by my boyfriend's mum, with some alterations. This one is buttercream covered, strawberries on top (pre-dusted with icing sugar to give them a glaze), chocolate sheets around the outside (can you believe Wendy's charge 80c per rectangle when they are so easy to make yourself?) and a red ribbon to give it the final touch.
Then I started with the fondant. Oh the glorious glorious gel food colouring. I didn't have to struggle with the pale, limp fondant that liquid food colouring gave. Save for the red fondant, that took and insane amount of colouring and I still didn't get the bright red I wanted!
Cake number 3 is ladybug themed. The heart here comes in the form of a heart-shaped leaf, which the naughty ladybugs have been chomping on. The leaf stem also comes down the side of the cake to form a heart. Had some fondant failage here, but I was under pressure to get it done before my boyfriend arrived so I had no time for perfection.
Cake 4 is bees. The idea was that the bee trail would form heart shapes. I had serious piping failure. My piping nozzle was clearly not thin enough (note to self: buy proper equipment) and my royal icing was probably the wrong consistency.
Piping failage also extended to the centrepiece cake. This one has a buttercream layer under the fondant. I fluted some white frills. Was supposed to pipe around the top edge, but after my other piping failage, I decided to leave it.
Final shots:
Originally posted here @ bakebakebake.