Giant Cupcake filled with Jam and Buttercream: 

This is my first ever attempt at a birthday cake.  Shameful I know as my daughter is now 4 years old.

Last year my husband made her Peppa Pig cake which was delicious. However, he had mistaken 2 tsp of baking powder for 2 tsb, and consequently it will be forever known as the farty party cake.  Consequently, with ‘Val‘ now in my posession, I felt it was my time to step into the breach.

Wanting to achieve maximum wow factor for minimal effort I bought a giant cupcake cake pan from Lakeland.  Although I justified it at the time, on reflection it was far too expensive considering I’ve only used it twice.  Still, the cake did look mighty fine (before I iced it at least).

The icing was a vanilla buttercream recipe from the The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook/– definitely not one for those with more of a savoury disposition (I think the proportions are in the region of over 3 parts icing sugar to 1 part butter).  As you’ll see from the picture, that combined with the food colouring in the lurid pink icing, meant anyone consuming more than a small slice was wired like a duracell bunny for the next couple of hours.

Also, I found that the red food colouring I used (Dr Oetker) didn’t make a nice rose pink colour, but more of a icky salmon pink so I will look for something else next time.

However, on the plus side the cake was actually quite tasty.  I had used the recipe that came with the cake tin to be on the safe side (a denser madeira style sponge) filled with raspberry jam and MORE buttercream.  It may have been a little overbaked on the outside (then again I hadn’t lined or protected the tin at all), but It was still very edible, not too heavyand most importantly full of flavour.

All in all not a bad first effort – even if I say so myself.