. The last few days have beeen very, very hot and ''muggy'' or ''clammy''as my dad would say ! The best place to be is in the pool, This weekend my youngest boy...Miguel..was invited to a classmates birthday party, it didn't start until seven o'clock , but by midnight their pool was still full of children.
It was a lovely evening, the children all splashing around happily in the pool and the parents relaxing, enjoying a moonlit supper amongst friends.
I made a birthday cake for the birthday girl, last year I made her a doll cake, but she is absolutely crazy for SpongeBob,so I had a go at making a SpongeBob cake, it came out quite well.
To make the cake I used a 25 x 30 cm rectangular baking tin, which I greased and lined before I started.
I made a basic cake mix, which is the weight of the eggs,in margarine,self-raining flour and sugar.
The size tin I used needed a 5 egg mixture, when weighed with shells on they totalled 11 oz...
So here the ingredientsI used for a 25 x 30 cm tin
5 eggs
11 oz, butter or margarine
11 oz, sugar
11 oz, self raining flour
1 tablespoon of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
1/ Firstly, Preheat the oven to around....180' C/350'F ,
Then whisk together the margarine(or butter) and the sugar
2/ Then add the eggs, one at a time followed by a spoon of flour , so the mixture doesn't seperate, whisking after each egg, then add the rest of the flour, milk and vanilla essence and whisk all together, until pale and creamy.
3/ Place the mixture into your prepared cake tin,making sure you level out into all corners of the tin,
4/Place into the oven, cook for approx, 20 minutes OR until is risen, golden brown and a knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
5/ Take out of oven, and leave cool on a wire rack
6/While the cake is cooling, cut a piece of paper the size of your cake tin and from this cut out the body shapes for your Spongebob.
7/When cool lay the paper shapes on top of the cake,(you can use pins to keep them in place if needed, but remember to remove them !) Then begin cutting the cake into the shapes, i cut out a body, arms and legs. Any cake that has been cut off, place to one side .
8/ Assemble the cake pieces onto a board,if you havent a cake board use a piece of board covered in tinfoil sellotaped underneath, so it doesn't move.
9/ Begin to decorate. It is a bit fiddly and took me just under 2 hours to complete.
For the decoration you will need :- ready to roll icing,(approx half small packet)
Food colourings, black, blue, red and yellow.
1 tablespoon of cocoa
buttercream, ( 150-200g butter and icing sugar creamed together)
10/ First I cut all the white shapes that I needed from the ready made icing.... shirt front, collars, sleeves, different sized circles for the eyes, mouth & teeth, tie and socks.
11/Paint 2 circles with blue food colouring, and paint the tie with red food colouring, The mouth needed a red tongue, and the rest painted in black then the teeth added when dry.
when painting these dont be too heavy with the colouring or they won't dry out properly.
12/ Make up the buttercream, keeping a quarter of this to one side, adding yellow colouring to the rest until it is the desired colour.
13/ Add some cocoa powder to the remaining buttercream, mixing together well.
14/Begin to assemble your SpongeBob.
15/ I used yellow buttercream for his body and arms, I cut a small circle of the left over cake and covered with buttercream for his nose, and chocolate buttercream for his trousers.
The shoes were a bit tricky, I used black glace icing(icing sugar, drops of water and colour )
and slowly built up the colour. stick together the parts using buttercream as a 'glue', layer the eyes, using a small ball of white on top.
16/ Using a small coloured squeezy tube of brown coloured icing I added the details, his eye lashes, belt and outlined his featured and arms.
17/The final result was very well recieved by the birthday girl and well worth the time making it.
This basic cake mix can make loads of different styles of cake, you just need a little imagination and a lot of time. !!
A doll cake I made last year.
A racing car track one, The boys love this !!
The same basic mixture, can be reduced, the weight of two eggs in fat,flour and sugar woul make 12-18 fairy cakes, ideal for decorating.
And these were made for a party as an alternative to a large cake,
much easier for sharing, no plates needed, much less mess!!
I hope some of my ideas will inspire you to have a go and bake !!
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