Monday 9 April 2012

Sprouts Birthday

It was my boyfriend Neils Birthday on the 31st of March. He was 30 and we've been together nearly 4 years so of course I couldn't see him go without a pretty cake! I started with a basic sponge mix and made 2 tray bakes. I gave them a day to settle as always because if you try working with a fresh cake it'll crumble and you just can't do anything with it! I then layered them up. Cake with a layer of mixed fruit jam, then a layer of butter cream, a second layer of mixed fruit jam and then another cake. I then trimmed round the edges to square it off and to look pretty and smoother round the edges with some spare butter cream.


I put jam over the top of the cake to make it sticky, rolled out some marzipan and covered the cake. I them sealed the cake by using a pastry brush to paint it with vodka.

After that I got out the ready to roll icing and and coloured it orange. Squished it with my hands to make it nice and soft and easy to shape, I then rolled it out nice and thin and cover the whole cake. I used icing tools to cut off the edges nice and smooth, and to smooth out any air bubbles in the cake. Neil supports wolverhampton wanderers hence the orange. I also looked up on google for a picture of the logo and copied it onto some grease proof paper.

Then using some more ready to roll fondent I used icing tools and a pizza cutter to make the shape of the logo and using lots of care and little bit of water I put the logo in the center of the cake. Unbelievably I managed to get it in the middle and if I say so myself, I think it looked fairly decent. hehehe.

I then put some black butter cream into a piping back and used a thin nozzle to pipe out "Sprout" (thats Neils nickname and what everyone knows him by) "happy birthday". I then piped a big 3 and a 0 as he was 30. Funny thing was that the way it looked it looked like 3-nil and with Wolves playing that day I was very much hoping they wouldn't lose by 3-nil because I might look like I was taking the mick! Luckily they didn't.

Here is the finished product! Neil sent me a text at work when he saw it that said "cake looks superb! We better not lose by 3-0 tho!". So I'm glad to say he liked it, and so did I. Very pleased with it. The rest of the photos are of Sprout blowing out his candles after him and I and 18 of our friends had a sit down dinner at our local and of the rest of the evening.



Thankyou so much to all of our friends who cake at such short notice to sit and have dinner with us and share Sprouts birthday. It was a lovely night and it was good to see all the cake gone! To my Sprouty, Happy 30th Birthday. It's been 3 and a half years already and it's been no picnic but I love you with all my heart and always will and spending days making you a cake is just one of the things I will do and will keep doing to make you happy. To many more Birthdays together! x