Sprout's House: Cakes

Does your little one love princesses, pink and anything girly? If so, this Princess Cake will be perfect for you!

Princess Cake Tutorial by Sprout's House

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It was Sprout’s 4^th birthday last month and she decreed a few weeks before her party that she wanted a pink princess cake. In fact, she even picked the one she wanted out of one of my recipe books. However, after looking at the recipe and seeing that it consisted of two tiers plus separate turrets as well as a set of new cake tins I decided to come up with my own version!

Don't be put off by the long list of ingredients/equipment - the Victoria Sandwich is a doddle and probably the easiest cake I have ever made. Whilst the sponges are cooking and cooling you can make the icing, the flags, turrets, drawbridge and door.

Ingredients:

200g caster sugar

200g softened butter

200g self-raising flour

4 eggs beaten

1tsp baking powder

2tbsp milk

2x 20 cm sandwich tins

baking paper

Vanilla Icing:

500g icing sugar sifted

160g unsalted butter – room temperature

50ml whole milk

a couple of drop of vanilla extract

pink food colouring - add the colouring as soon as you have made the icing OR use white icing for the filling and the colour the icing for the outside of the cake.

Filling:

340g jar of good quality strawberry jam

Decorations:

4 waffle ice cream cones

20 white sugar cubes

15 small white and pink mini marshmallows

4 ice cream wafers

30-40 iced gems

6 bamboo skewers

1 cake board

Pink tissue paper

Happy Birthday wrapping paper or similar

Time: 2-3 hours (This is an estimate as I had Sprout wrapped around my ankles and I was taking photos too - you can probably do it more quickly!)

1. Make the cake using this simple Victoria Sandwich recipe and wait for the sponges to cool.

2. Make the icing using this recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery.

3. Assemble the cake – dab a bit of icing in the centre (but slight towards the back of the cake board so that the drawbridge fits in) and place the first sponge cake on top of it. Spread a layer of icing then a layer of jam before adding the second sponge cake.

4. If you haven’t already done so, add a few drops of pink food colouring to the icing.

5. Ice the cake starting with the sides and finishing with the top. You can crumb coat it if you like, but I found that I didn’t really need to.

6. Once the cake is iced, you can get a really smooth finish by dipping the pallet knife into boiling water and gently running it over the entire cake.

7. To make the turrets, take each ice cream cone in turn and carefully snip around the top so that the cone will stand up straight when it's upside down. You may also need to snip a little bit off the tip so that the bamboo skewer will pass through it easily. Arrange the cones upside down on the cake.

8.To make the battlements, place the sugar cubes at regular intervals around the outside of the cake.

9.To make the door, take two of the wafers and gently cut into the shape of a door. Carefully, stick to the side of the cake.

10.To make the drawbridge, take two of the wafers, cut to the correct shape if required and lay on the cake board in front on the door. Secure with a dab of icing.

11.Thread 5/6 mini marshmallows on to two bamboo skewers. You may need to snip off the excess bamboo. Rest each skewer on the cake so that it appears that the drawbridge is attached to the cake.

12.Place Iced Gems around the bottom of the cake.

13.To make the pink flags, cut 8 diamonds out of pink tissue paper. Fold each of the diamonds in half and separate into two piles of four. Wrap one diamond around the end of a skewer and glue in place so that the points match up. Add the other three diamonds one on top of the other, but only glue each one around the skewer so that it looks like the flags are fluttering in the breeze. Repeat with the other pile of diamonds.

14.To make the ‘Happy Birthday’ flags, using some left over wrapping paper and cut out rectangles. (I cut rectangles around the words Happy Birthday). Fold each rectangle in half and wrap around the skewers. Match up the short edges of each rectangle and glue in place. Cut a little triangle in the end of each flag.

15.Add the four flags to the cake, pushing each skewer through the hole in the tip of the cone all the way into the cake.

16. And breathe.... you’re finished!!....

What cakes have you made for your children's birthdays? For inspiration, read about Sprout's Peppa Pig Cake and Fire Engine Cake.

Sprout’s House

xox

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Want a cake that wows? Try this Rainbow Cake with an added extra surprise inside!

At the beginning of March, I shared the party bags I had created for a little group of Sprout’s friends who she has known since birth. On that occasion, I also made a Rainbow Cake – in fact I ended up making two - one as an experiment earlier that week and then the real thing!

I used this recipe for the sponge and then iced it using this vanilla icing from the Hummingbird Bakery!

For this particular recipe, you have to make two batches of the sponge and then divide each batch into three bowls (ie six bowls overall) so that you can add food colouring to each one.

Although, the colours look fairly vibrant in the bowls you can see from the finished product that some of the layers are a little bit indistinguishable in terms of colour. I think I need to add more food colouring!!....

For the icing, I ended up making 4 or 5 batches of the Hummingbird vanilla frosting although I probably could have done with another batch.

Overall, the cake was quite a success and it was certainly devoured by Sprout’s Daddy’s colleagues! However, I did think that all that vanilla icing made the cake quite sweet so for the real thing I decided to use chocolate icing.

I used the same sponge recipe again, but defected to the Hummingbird Chocolate Frosting recipe. I also decided to halve the number of layers to three, so the end result consisted of three thicker layers.

This time once I had iced the first layer (all apart from the very centre so the smarties don’t go soggy!); I used a star-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the centre of the middle layer. This layer was then placed on top and the centre filled with smarties. Smother this layer with icing and then pop the last layer on. The last step is to ice the entire cake and decorate!

Once the cake was iced, I used a palette knife dipped in boiling water to help get a really smooth finish on the sides of the cake. On the top, I piped rose swirls using a Wilton Tip 1B and then used the same tip to pipe little decorative touches around the base of the cake.

As there were going to be three small people blowing out candles, I used these happy birthday candles so everyone had a good chance at blowing out a couple of candles.

The inside of cake came out surprisingly well with three chunky coloured layers and a little smartie surprise in the middle. I’m afraid I didn’t manage to get any ‘nice’ photos of the layers, but here’s one after it had been devoured by the masses!!