Practise Wedding Cakes

I had a practise run for my wedding cakes!
Im making 4, the fruit cake isnt shown as someone else is decorating that

This is them with their crumb coat - they always look so cute like this i think, all new and yummy!




This is the red velvet with toasted marshmallow frosting. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of this one cut - doh! Its totally the most dramatic :(
Anyway i used this Nigella recipe for red velvet cupcakes, just made it as a cake, and this marshmallow frosting. I spread the frosting smoothly on the sides and then piped little mini meringues on the top and then toasted it all with a blow torch

The chocolate fudge cake - by far the most popular! Its a fab recipe, again by Nigella, which ive been making for years. i love it because it isnt too sweet, and it has a really fudgey texture without being heavy. This one is topped with basic chocolate butter cream piped as roses. Its really just a swirl, piped with a large star tip nozzle. Its really easy but looks like its really complicated!

Any finally this is a lemon cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream
Yet again, a nigella recipe, i just doubled the quantities for her Lemon Drizzle cake. The topped it with this amazing swiss meringue buttercream. Ive never made it before and it does take a little while but it sreally delicious, and very stable, which i great for a summer wedding. This was supposed to be a little better finished off but i ran out of steam somewhat on the third cake! Something to consider when making the real things...



Makes me hungry just remembering them!

Speckled birds egg chocolate cake with whipped buttercream and nutella butter cream

It was my birthday recently and i like to make a cake for the folks at work each year. This year i decided to combine a few techniques i'd been wanting to try out. The folks at work never mind being my guinesa pigs!

So i started with my go to chocolate cake recipe by Nigella Lawson -its brilliant you must try it.
And added nutella butter cream as the filling. When i saw nutella buttercream on pinterest i couldnt believe id never though of it before - such a brilliant idea!


I also used the nutella butter cream as the crumb coat. Id never crumb coated before but as my icing was going to be pale and my cake was dark i thought it would be a good idea.



I let that chill for a couple of hours and then i made my whipped butter cream topping. I find butter cream too heavy and quite sickly so i was very pleased to find this whipped butter cream recipe from Can you Stay for Dinner. It really is a winner, almost mousse like in texture, so much lighter than regular buttercream and nowhere near as sickly.
So i covered my cake with the delicious topping, coloured a pale blue in anticipation of the next step.


I fell in love with this speckled egg cake from The Cake Blog the minute i saw it and have been dying to make one for ages. So i gently speckled the cake with cocoa and water and this was the result. The picture genuinely doesnt do it justice. It was so pretty, even with my slightly dodgy cake decorating skills! I would definitely make the icing darker next time, i was worried about it looking too fake but i should have gone the whole hog and made it blue instead of pale blue!

Everyone at work loved it and it all got eaten - the biggest compliment of all!