My First Commission

A little while ago, I had exciting news - one of my colleagues from work came up to me and asked if I would make a cake for her friend's 50th birthday.  My very first commission!  I was chuffed, as you can imagine.  I had about 6 weeks before the cake was needed, but I began planning what I would do almost immediately, consulting my colleague as I went along.  In the end, we decided that I would make a four-layer sponge cake, with each layer being a different shade of pink.  This seemed an easy enough task for me.  My main worry, however, was that I would have to attempt to properly decorate for the first time, which meant getting to grips with fondant icing.  I was not looking forward to this.  The only other time I'd used fondant icing was when L and I made the tokamak cake.  Whilst that cake looked fine, it wasn't exactly refined.  So I therefore decided to do several trial runs of this cake, not only to test out the sponge, but to get a handle on the icing.

Ingredients: Sponge - 

• 350g butter, at room temperature
• 350g caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• 350g self-raising flour
• 2 tsp chocolate extract
• Pinch of salt

Buttercream (three times required for the filling and the covering) - 

• 140g/5oz butter, softened
• 280g/10oz icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• few drops vanilla extract

First I set up the two 9-inch sandwich cake tins I had, greasing them with cake release spray. The oven was then preheated to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.

Then I beat together the butter and sugar, before adding the eggs one at a time.  After this, the chocolate extract was mixed in, and then the flour and salt were sifted together, and gently folded into the cake mixture.  Then the cake mix was divided into four bowls, and the painstaking process of adding the colour to get the correct shades of pink.  I used a bog-standard red liquid food-colouring from the supermarket.  It looked a little different to how I thought it would, but I waited to see how it would look after the bake before I made any snap judgements.

Not looking too pink to me...

Each batch of two cake mixes was baked for twenty minutes before being turned out first onto a tea-towel, and then onto a cooling wire.  Once all four were cooled, the delicate-ish process of putting the cake together could begin.  I made the buttercream by mixing together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla and milk.  Each layer of cake had a layer of buttercream spread on top before the next layer was put on.

Ready for construction.

The resulting tower of cake was then covered in a layer of buttercream.

Not-so-leaning tower of cake.

I made use of a handy little item that I'd picked up from a recent spree at Lakeland (the place of dreams).  I'd bought a side-scraper, which would help smooth out the buttercream before the fondant icing was put on.  I must say, the cake looked pretty good once the side-scraper had been used.

Looking good, and ready for icing.

The cake was then put into the fridge to chill for fifteen minutes, to help the buttercream set before icing.  Then it was the moment I had been dreading - I had to grapple with the icing.  Luckily for lazy old me, supermarkets offer this rather wonderful innovation in icing - ready-rolled fondant icing.  I LOVE this product - it's great for icing novices like me, and saved me worrying about how I was going roll out enough fondant without ruining it/breaking it/crying over it.  Just one word of caution, be quite gentle with it - the icing can tear fairly easily if you're a little bit too rough with it, resulting in some panicked swearing, followed by some desperate patching up of the icing, and a quick decision as to how said patching was going to be disguised.

Just about covered.

First I smoothed out the icing using another new purchase, and then I got to work on the exterior decoration.  For this I decided to use my new sunflower cutters, and some ready-to-roll pink icing to match the interior of the cake.

Rolling out the icing for the flowers.

As you can see, this required the use of a lot of icing sugar, as the fondant has a tendency to stick to the surface it's rolled out on if there isn't enough icing sugar.

Lovely pink sunflowers.

I also discovered that I was cutting the sunflowers out a little bit too thick, but this was the whole point of having trial runs, I suppose.  I certainly applied necessary changes for the next attempt.  I decided to try to dye pink the icing sugar used to stick the flowers onto the cake.  This brought up some more reservations, as the icing looked more orangey than pink, which did not bode well for the sponges I'd made earlier.  Still, I forged ahead.

Gluing the flowers on, one by one.

I cut out two different sizes of sunflowers, and glued them to the side of the cake, reasonably covering up the various cracks and folds in the icing.

A completed cake band of pink sunflowers.

I then used some red edible rainbow dust, mixed with water, to paint a metallic line around the top of the cake.

Edible metallic red/pink paint.

The top of the cake was then decorated with red and pink sugar roses (I have yet to develop the skills to make these for myself, so it was simply easier to buy some rather than risk ruining the cake by making rubbish ones).

Finished!

Once the cake was completed, it was then time for the moment of truth, and I tentatively cut into the cake.

Ah, not pink.

Well, to say I was not happy was an understatement.  Whilst there was obvious definition between the layer colours, they were most definitely NOT pink.  That'll teach me to buy cheap food colouring.

Yep, definitely not pink.

Whilst the cake didn't look as it should, it did taste very nice.  Yet again the victoria sponge recipe from the Rosie's Pantry Baking book proved to be a yummy success, and went some way to making up for the lack of pink.

A full-on look at just how not-pink this cake was.

So I then decided to try a different food colouring for the second trial run.  I used a mixture of red food colouring gel and pink food colouring gel.

Looking better already

Already, it was looking better than the first try.  I also decided to make a few changes to the decoration of the cake.  I still used the ready-rolled icing, the pink sunflowers, and the sugar roses, but this time I cut much thinner sunflowers, and placed the sugar roses right in the centre of the top of cake.  I also did not colour the icing sugar used to glue the sunflowers on this time.  By leaving the icing white, it blended in much better with the fondant covering the cake.

Slightly different design; looking better, I think.

I also painted the entire side of the cake with the metallic edible paint, including the pink sunflowers.  This did look rather nice once the paint had dried.

Side-on view of the new design.

Once again there was a moment of worry as I cut into the cake for the first time...

Huzzah!  Pink!

Ta-dah!  This time it worked absolutely perfectly.  I was so incredibly pleased with it.  I had also taken the cake into work this time so my colleague could judge for herself if she thought the cake and the design was right for her friend's 50th.

Definitely pink!

Luckily for me, she absolutely loved it.  We were both so pleased with the pink sponge layers, and how they looked with the white and pink icing on the outside of the cake.  All my work colleagues were also very pleased that day, as everyone got to try a slice of the cake, including the doctors (made myself popular with the bosses that day!).  What was just as pleasing as the reaction to the decoration, though, was how everyone said that the cake tasted lovely as well which was a big relief to me.  I must admit, I was incredibly pleased with the finished result; I do think it was one of my best bakes yet.

Yup, lovely and pink. Yay!

So, here is the finished final cake, ready to go to the 50th birthday party.  I should mention that, in addition to the decorations you see below, there was also a red, glittery '50' candle, that was going to be put on the cake in time for the party.  I also made a few alterations to the design, but I think it looks just as nice as the second trial run, if a little different.

One complete birthday cake.

Alas, I have no photos yet of how the cake looked once it was cut into, but my colleague has promised to send me some photos once she has them.  She told me that everyone loved the cake, especially the birthday girl, which made day.  I got paid to make this cake, but I can honestly say that I would have done it for free - just making the cake, and experimenting with the icing was enough to keep me happy.  I'll be honest though, I wasn't about to turn down any payment.

Yet another new design, but an improvement on the old ones I hope.

So this was my first commissioned cake, and I like to think that it was a success.  Yes, the first trial run had issues with the sponge colouring, and I was a little uneasy with the decorating at times (novice decorator issues!), but it worked well enough in the end, and most importantly the birthday girl liked it.  Therefore I am very happy with how it turned out.

Beckie.