Rachel's Birthday Cake

Tom's little sister was 17 a few weeks back and I got asked to make the cake! It was a simple sponge but strictly without jam, so there was no buttercream spare this time. I had an absolute nightmare with the black icing; I attempted to persevere with the first tar-like batch but it resisted and managed to kill 2 of my mixers! I don't really know what went wrong with it but it looked like it belonged on the pavement more than on a cake... cue a very stressful last minute trip to the supermarket (3.45pm on a Sunday!) enabling me to start again. 17 on one-side and an R on the other and lots of random swirly bits in between! It tasted good too!

This was my first real venture into birthday cake style icing but I'm signed up to take on his other sister's 21st cake, I'm feeling adventurous so watch this space...

Birthday Boy

So, while I've been gone it was my wonderful boyfriend's birthday (only 4 days after mine), naturally I was compelled to make him a kick-ass cake but I also wanted to play with a new icing head I got so one could argue that I went a little overboard on the piping!

Anyway, it was your average birthday sponge sandwiched with mouth-watering fresh blueberry jam (I use the word jam loosely as the berries were almost entirely intact) and blueberry buttercream. The buttercream came out an off-putting 70s shade of salmon/putty so I toned it down to a pretty lilac, yes I know, incredible masculine.

I had the lights off and the lighter at arms reach ready to start igniting the candles when at the signal (the door at the bottom of the stairs clicking shut when my beau got home from work) unfortunately though the surprise was slightly ruined by him running up the stairs 3 at a time - probably with birthday boy excitement - to catch me mid-way through lighting :-( "Go away!" was the wittiest response I could muster and he patiently waited outside while I lit the rest of the candles. In spite of that, the cake was delicious and now armed with even more piping heads I'm looking forward to excelling myself next year.