You know those cakes with the perfectly smooth icing on the sides, and sometimes have icing dripping down and cool decorations on the top. Yeah I love them too.
In preparation for my sisters 18th birthday I had been planning a (in my head spectacular) birthday cake for her. It was to be lemon meringue themed (after her favourite dessert) with white icing with blobs of pink and yellow, smoothed so they merged into one. It would have sprinkles on the bottom fading up and smarties on the inside which poured out when the cake was cut. Finally, it would be decorated with mini meringues with lemon curd inside on top, edible flowers and happy birthday written in melted white chocolate with gold glitter on the top. As with most bakes it didn’t turn out as imagined and instead looked like this.
From start to finish everything that could go wrong with this cake did (this is why there is a lack of pictures, I was too stressed trying to fix the cake).
Firstly, I decided to bake 3 cakes so it would be taller than a normal cake. I used a 4 egg mixture but they turned out like pancakes. I then realised that I had used all of the eggs in the cake and didn’t have any left for the meringues. Instead I improvised and decided to make a chocolate shell – something I’d only ever seen and not made. For this I found a candle which was round on the bottom and a good size to fit on but not completely cover the whole surface of the cake. I then covered this in Clingfilm to stop any wax/dirt etc getting into the chocolate. Then, I melted around 50g chocolate and poured/drizzled this over the candle to make a chocolate dome. This was left in the fridge to set.
Before assembling the cakes I made a hole in the middle of the bottom and middle cakes and filled these with smarties, so when the cake was cut they’d pour out. I then spread buttercream in between each layer and on the outside of the cake.
For the icing I tried to make it really smooth but for some reason it was really hard icing and wouldn’t spread that well. I think this was due to it being a really hot day and so the icing kept melting so I kept adding more icing sugar, which stiffened it up. I think this also partly occurred because usually meringue buttercream is used for smooth icing whereas mine was a standard butter and icing sugar icing. The yellow kinda overtook too so the whole icing turned out yellow instead of yellow, white and pink!
I decorated the cake with the chocolate shell, filled with smarties, edible sugar crystals and sugar shimmer pearls. I had written happy birthday in melted piped chocolate but this spread into unreadable words so I ate that. I also decorated the top with some yellow macarons. I decided against the edible flowers as I read somewhere (not sure if it’s true) that they affect people with hayfever so decided not to make anyone’s hayfever worse!
Despite the unplanned appearance the cake went down well – that is until the dog ate it!!
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