Present Birthday Cake

So those of you who know me know that it was my birthday about 3 weeks ago and I’ve finally got around to posting about the cake I made for my birthday! After seeing some cakes online that were decorated to look like presents I’ve been dying to make one so my birthday was obviously the perfect opportunity. My lovely friends gave me some Lakeland vouchers for my birthday and so I used some of them to buy this great square tin with moveable sides so you can make it any size square/rectangle you like, pretty good huh?

While I may have splashed out on a tin, I did not buy myself any icing as I had some odds and ends in my baking cupboard so I used them up. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough white to cover the whole cake so it’s very thin and patchy so ignore that in the pictures but the main thing I wanted to do was the bow on top. I watched a quick online tutorial and found out that it’s quite straightforward and you get a great result with a simple method. This is the bit that I’m most pleased with and as it was my first attempt, it can only get better!

The cake itself was just a plain Victoria Sponge mix using 6 eggs in total which made an 8in square cake. I also bought a cake leveller which I used to slice my block of cake in half to put jam in the middle and also to level off the top slightly so that it wasn’t so domed. The cake took a lot longer in the oven than anticipated so unfortunately the edges got a little dry so I’ll have to work to improve that next time but I was very pleased with my first present cake.

My work with regal ice and sugar paste is definitely improving through practice and I’m starting to love celebration cakes more and more. The next one you’ll see here will be a champagne cake which a lovely lady at work has asked me to make for her husband’s 50t birthday. Eek!