Iced birthday cake

sillysocks

My daughters first birthday is coming up in a while and I've decided I better be a 'good housewife' and make a cake for it rather than buying one! I enjoy baking but normally just make small things like cupcakes or biscuits etc so am looking for suggestions for a cake.

I've bought the below topper (which is made of icing not edible paper if that makes a difference), and am thinking I'd like to make something kind of similar to the cake in the picture, minus the fancy edging as that might be one step too far

Could anyone give me suggestions of the type of cake that would be nice for an iced cake like this? Also, are the ready to roll icings you can get in the shops any good? I'd like to try that to get a smooth finish. If I use that icing should I have buttercream or something under it to help the icing stick to the cake?

Any suggestions or opinions welcome!
Might try one this weekend as a trial run (any excuse for a bit of baking!)

Acoshla

You can get ready to roll icing in Tesco, they have their own brand, Dr. Oetker, and Shamrock. Or you can get small packs in a cake supplies shop, stuff4cakes.ie, Decobake, Kitchen Compliments, etc. This is the stuff you need to get the smooth finish, along with a smoother and a good rolling pin with no seams in it. You can buy it coloured in cake supply shops, if you buy it white and want to add colour you need paste colours not liquid food colouring, these can be got in cake supply shops too.

A madeira cake would be perfect under that icing, you need a cake that is firm and strong enough to support the weight of the sugarpaste icing, a light fluffy sponge won't do it. Make sure your cake is level, trim it gently with a knife if needed. And yep buttercream or ganache under the sugarpaste will give it a tacky surface to stick to.

sillysocks

Great advice, thanks!

Any good receipes for Madeira cake? Have googled but there seems loads of variations and would love to use one I know someone has tried and tested.
I have a feeling the icing looks easy to do but bet its not as easy as it looks (even with ready made stuff!)

Acoshla

I use a particular hybrid recipe that I've made up myself combining a few other recipes, it suits me but it's a bit of an odd one so it only confuses other people. A lot of people use Lindy Smith's recipe, maybe Google that?

sillysocks

Thanks!
That was actually the first receipe I came across when I searched.
One last rookie question (hopefully!), below is the quantities, if I want to have like a sandwich with icing/jam in middle would I need to make two of these or would this be enough to split in two?


350g (12 oz)              Unsalted Butter
350g (12 oz)              Caster Sugar
350g (12 oz)              Self Raising Flour
175g (6oz)                 Plain Flour
6                                Large Eggs

Acoshla

Split that in two halves for a 9 inch round, will give a big enough cake. What size is the picture?

sillysocks

Perfect thanks so much for your help!
Picture is 7.5 inch round so 8 or 9 inch cake would be fine but I'm only doing a 'trial' cake now so won't be putting the picture on this cake anyway.

Was just about to start there now and realised I forgot to get more butter earlier so off to the shops again I go. Grr!

Acoshla

You could use regular butter for the cake, save unsalted for the buttercream.

sillysocks

Well had to go the shop anyway so got the unsalted butter.

Have a small disaster on my hands already though - its in the oven cooking away and looks nice but one part seems to have come up over the tin and out over the edge so there's a big lump of mixture coming out from one side of it. Maybe the tin was too small - although its in an 8 inch tin which is what the receipe said but I can just cut off the little extra exploded bit once its finished so is salvageable!

The receipe seems to think its a better idea to leave it overnight before icing/cutting it so might do that and hope that hubbie doesn't get his hands on it first

Fingers crossed!

Acoshla

A 6 egg mix is way too big for an 8 inch tin, coming out over one side is weird, was the fan on?

sillysocks

Yeah had the fan on. Was the side nearest the fan that went out, towards the fan. Looked very strange! It broke away fairly easily so no big deal. I think if I'm making it again I'll just split it between two tins as the top and bottom - receipe recommended one cake and then cut it afterwards. Going to attempt to cut it tomororw so will see what happens!

Think the top baked a bit too much as well, its quite crispy almost, but the inside wasn't done any earlier. I covered it for the last half hour or so so maybe would have to do that for a bit longer to stop the top cooking too much.

Anyway bake and learn

Tomorrow is cut and ice day, god knows what state it'll end in then! Will post a pic when I'm done.

Thanks for all the advice.

sillysocks

Here's a pic of what I ended up with, it actually looks more overdone in the pic than in real life but it is quite crisp on top. Good job I didn't enter any Irish equivalent of The Great British Bake Off!

Will have to do a few more practise runs I think, all the more tasting for me to do

Acoshla

Yeah your tin is just way too small, it shouldn't be able to come up out over the sides at all, did your tin have very low sides, a spring form or something?

sillysocks

Yeah the sides are quite low, somewhere on the receipe it mentioned a 3inch deep tin and I had one of those so just used that. Think I'd either want a way deeper tin or else just split it into two low tins.

I iced it this morning, I cut the top off which got rid of the extra crispy bits, and split it in two. Both of those things were easier to do than I thought.
Put jam and buttercream icing in the middle, and a small bit of buttercream on the outside to help the rolled icing stick.

I had forgotten about decorating it though so have a very plain white icing cake now! I did fork pricks all over it which took the bare look off it, I shoud have kept the extra icing I cut from the edge but never thought of that and binned it. Could have used that for some bows or something. Had one mark on the top where the icing stuck to itself when I was unrolling it.
I also need to get one of the smoothers and probably need a firmer hand in pressing the icing down.

Doesn't taste too bad though and thats the main thing!

Anyway plenty of lessons learnt for next time anyway
Thanks for all your help!