Cow Cake

I love cake and I love animals; for my day job I work in animal health, so when my bosses birthday came around I couldn’t resist making him this adorable cake!

I made 2 large lemon drizzle sheet cake scaling up a recipe from Marry Berry. I really like her recipe and think her lemon drizzle cakes has a lovely sharpness to it which balances out the sweetness nicely.  I sandwiched the cake with lemon curd and free hand cut the shape of the cows head, then from the off cuts shaped the horns and ears separately and added them on before brushing the whole thing with an icing sugar and lemon juice/water mix.

I rolled out white fondant icing to cover the head and horns, Black icing to cover the ears and make the nostrils as well as the characteristic splodges of a Friesian cow. I combined white and black fondant for the eyes. For the inner ear jaw and the muzzle of the cow, I mixed red food colouring with the white fondant to produce a pale pink.

One of the diseases which our lab tests for is Bluetongue so I couldn’t resist giving the cow a cheeky little blue tongue.

I think he looks so cute and he tasted amazing too. What sort of cakes do you like to make? Do you bake for the people you work with too?

Till next time make something with love

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Useful Links:

• Lemon Drizzle Cake
• Fondant Icing

Horse Cake

My horse Copper

I’m horsey mad I had them growing up and have always been around them, so naturally I have a lot of horsey mad friends too. I Made this cake for one of them.

I found a recipe for a white chocolate and raspberry cake on the BBC good food website which I really wanted to try out so I doubled the mixture in order to make 2 sheet cakes. I also increased the mixture for the white chocolate ganache and instead of using it to sandwich the cakes, I  crumb coated the whole cake with it after carving the shape. I decided to use seedless raspberry jam as the central filling to give an extra raspberry kick.

I cut out the shape of the horses eat free hand using the picture of my horse as a reference for the shape of its head. I modelled the colouring and markings of the horse and the head collar on cake recipients horse. So I mixed a brownie orange fondant and used that to cover the ganache covered cake. I used the same coloured fondant to make strips of hair by cutting 2/3rds the way up the strips to make a fringe which I attached to the head and neck. her horse has a white stripe which is slightly wonky around one eye so I copied that out of plain white fondant and I cut out darker brown fondant eyes and nostrils. Lastly I made the head collar out of a bright blue. I do have a confession to make though… I was running a bit short on time so instead of making and colouring my own fondant I just used store bought ready to roll fondant and mixed premade colours till I got what I wanted. It isn’t that bad right?

she loved it  and it tasted awesome so I was really happy with how it turned out too. I really like making animal cakes as I think you can inject a lot of personality into them.

What is your Favourite type of cake to make?

Till Next time make something with love.

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Useful Links:

• White chocolate and raspberry cake recipe
• Fondant Icing

Tigger Birthday Cake

The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tiggers are wonderful things! Especially when they are made out of cake and icing instead of rubber and springs. I must confess, this isn’t a recent bake. I made it a couple of years ago for  my hubby’s birthday way back when we were dating and had totally forgotten about it. However, Timehop has a gift for reminding us about all sorts of things, so I thought I would share it with you guys now.

For the sponge I used one of my all time favourite go to chocolate cake recipes from Mary Berry ‘s Baking Bible, I love her recipe for very best chocolate fudge cake. It has a strong chocolate flavour making it really rich and indulgent.  I used this to make 2 sheet cakes which I sandwiched with black cherry jam as I know its his favourite, Although the recipe makes enough icing that it could easily be used as filling as well.

Once assembled, I used a picture of Tigger  to trace around to get the basic shape. then covered the cake in a thin layer of the icing before decorating with fondant . I mixed the colours I needed to give Tigger his trademark look either by mixing 2 existing colours of fondant or by adding gel food colouring to white . I also used Black  to add extra detail to the face stomach, hands and feet and give Tigger his much loved stripes.

 

I’m pretty proud of how things turned out especially as he tasted as good as i think he looks. Although, i did feel bad when we started cutting bits off him. Let me know what you think or share your epic bakes in the comments.

Till next time make something with love .

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