The Birthday Cake - Part 1, making the parts

In the past 4 weeks I have moved house, had christmas, then new years and now it's my birthday. It seems like these things never end sometimes. But on the upside, it means I get to make cake and go out with friends (to eat pizza, review to follow). So this post is about my birthday cake.

The Background:
Where I work it is a courtesy to bring in a cake for your birthday for everybody to eat. The first year I worked there I bought a cake. I have not done that since then, there has been no need. Last year I made miniature cupcakes in both vanilla and chocolate cake with different little toppings on them. This year it is going to be one regular size cake that looks like a present. Although it will look quite cool, I'm feeling a little unoriginal as I have already made one before.

I first came across this recipe for chocolate cake when I was selling the "Blue Ribbon Recipes" cookbook at work last year. To help promote the book I was baking cakes and biscuits to give away to customers as a promotion. The chocolate cake alone sold almost a whole box of books.

The Recipe:
Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons coconut
2 eggs

Method:

1. Melt the butter on the stove in a saucepan. 
2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
3. Beat the eggs lightly then add the milk to the eggs.
4. Add the butter and egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat for three minutes.
5. Bake in a moderate (150degrees celsius) for 30 minutes.

The Decorations:

For this cake I will be covering it with white icing coloured with yellow food colouring. Then I will be colouring white fondant icing with pink to make the "ribbon" and "bow" out of. I will also be colouring more white icing with orange to cut out some flower shapes to put on the yellow icing to make it look like wrapping paper.

I prefer to use Wilton food colouring as it is more concentrated, therefore less liquid and keeps the consistancy of the white icing better. But at the moment I have yellow and pink in Queen food colouring.

Colouring Fondant/White Icing.
Method:
To colour the fondant/white icing get a portion of the icing and place onto working surface (I use baking paper on top of a wooden cutting board usually).

 
Use a tooth pick to dip into the food colouring and poke into the icing.

Knead the icing until the food colouring is evenly distributed. Add more food colouring as you need to make the colour richer (wear gloves when doing this or you end up dying your hands whatever colour/s that you are dying the icing!)

And the finished coloured product

Part two soon to follow......