Mr Bertie at his birthday party this weekend, looking a little weary it has to be said. It’s hard to know if that was down to having just done his first two days at school…or the vast melt down he’d had earlier in the party for being rubbish at pin the tail on the donkey. Sigh…
I rashly decided to make both my children’s birthday cakes this year, as part of my 39 things to do before I’m 40 project. It was an ambitious addition to the list as I’m rubbish at cooking and baking, and I’d never attempted a birthday cake before.
Diggy’s, back in February, actually went quite well and even tasted good. No one was more surprised than me…
Emboldened by my earlier success I handed the fancy cake book to Bertie and let him choose his own. To be honest I was a bit disappointed he chose something so ‘easy’ (hollow laugh), which was included in the ‘simple cakes’ section of the book. I encouraged him to choose something more showy (thank GOD he didn’t go for it), but he was very firm in his choice of a number 5 shape cake in pale blue. Fine.
It should have been straightforward. Two cakes, one round, one square. Cut the middle out of the circle cake and a bit from the side, cut a couple of rectangles from the square one and assemble in a 5. The cake mix was the same as the one for the owl cake, and the buttercream icing looked very easy.
But it turned in a Whole Big Thing. First of all my mother’s 30 year old electric mixer went on the blink, and would only operate on the first two speeds. Then the first cake, the circle, failed to cook throughout and sank like a pancake when I got it out of the oven. It looked more like an omelet. Why? How did that happen? I didn’t open the oven door until the suggested cooking time was done. It clearly wasn’t done at that point so I left it for another 10 minutes, at which point a skewer came out clean so I took it out assuming it was cooked. Wrong. It did its collapsing act and I started with the heeby jeebies.
Luckily the uncooked ‘omelet’ bit was the bit that needed cutting out anyway.
Then I made the square one. I increased the cooking time but this one, too, sank a bit in the middle and was rather crunchy on the outside…not at all sponge like. And don’t even get me going on how hard it was to cobble it all together in a 5 shape…
Next day…I tackled the buttercream icing. My arm nearly fell off getting the icing sugar and butter to cream together. And then it was so stodgy I could have laid bricks with it. After a bit of humming and haaaaaring I added a bit of milk and that sorted it out. But it took FOREVER to ice that damn cake, really fiddly!
And I’d never used food dye before. How scary is food dye? Seems to be a fine line between ‘making no difference’ and ‘looking like something from a horror movie’. And it stained my hands blue, in a way I’ve not seen since 1986 when my Parker 25 consistently leaked ‘royal blue’ ink all over me for a whole school year.
I realised early on the cake wasn’t going to be a masterpiece of understated elegance. To detract from the vile blue crusty omelet, I made some Fimo clay aliens and they were a big hit. Alas they are not edible so people had to, youk now, actually eat the blue omelet. Some kind souls have said it was delicious. I ate some myself and can attest to the fact that it was dire. Even my children won’t eat it and I’ve had to chuck the leftovers in the bin.
I would ideally like the throw the towel in on the whole cake making business, since I found the whole thing so stressful. But Diggy has already been through the book and put in an order for a ‘rabbit cake’ for his next birthday.
Still, could have been worse. While I was going through Cake Hell my neighbour, with whom we shared the party, was hard at work on his masterpiece for his daughter. The dog ate it. He had to start all over again. At least I could just ice over my omelet and call it quits.
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