For my birthday cake this year I wanted to do something different, something that would stand out.
So I looked through a lot of recipes online, and I found a recipe on Jane Patisserie’s called Sprinkle Celebration Cake. You can find the recipe on Jane Patisserie’s site here.
I usually stick to butter icing when decorating bakes, so this cake was something different for me to make.
The use of fondant icing is not something I usually opt for in my baking but as I said I wanted to make a different cake this year. I could have chosen to do an easier design but I don’t do things by halves!
I wanted to make a cake that was all about the decoration of it. This cake is certainly that. The sponge is a simple vanilla sponge with a vanilla buttercream, in the original recipe on Jane Patisserie’s site the sponge’s were not gluten-free so I did adapt the recipe slightly to insure that all ingredients were gluten-free.
I really enjoyed making this cake, and experimenting with using fondant icing and colouring it. I used Sugarflair food colouring. Here is a direct link to the set of colours I used.
Recipe – My 22nd Sprinkle Birthday Cake
| Prep time: 15 minutes | Cook time: 18-20 minutes |
| Serves: 12 | Category: Cupcake |
Ingredients:
Sponge:
- 700g unsalted butter
- 700g caster sugar
- 700g gluten-free self-raising flour
- 14 medium eggs
- 6 tsp vanilla extract
Decorations:
- 250g unsalted butter
- 500g icing sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2-3 tsp boiling water
- 1500g fondant icing
- Food colours
Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 160c fan/ 180c/gas mark 4 and line 4 cake tins.
- Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract until pale and creamy.
- Add in eggs and flour and mix until all combined.
- Place in tins equally and bake for 35-40 minutes until cooked (when a skewer comes out clean).
- Leave too cakes to cool completely.
- Whilst waiting for the cakes to cool, soften the butter to make the buttercream. Beat butter cream with icing sugar for a few minutes.
- Then add in a tablespoon of boiling water and whisk until the buttercream is light and fluffly in consistency. If the buttercream is still very stiff, then add a bit more boiling water and whisk again for a few minutes. The buttercream wants to hold its shape but be easy to stir through with a spatula.
- Once all the cakes have cooled, layer up the cakes with buttercream.
- Then cover the outside of the cake with a ‘crumb coat’ of buttercream. This helps lock in all the crumbs of the cake. Ensure the sides and the top of the cake are smooth, using a scrapper or palette knife.
- Place the cake in the fridge for 30minutes to 1 hour to allow the buttercream to firm and set.
- Whilst the buttercream is setting, using about 1kg of fondant icing and add some colour to it. When I did this, I used Sugarflair baby pink colouring (this is the same as the Jane Patisserie recipe). Kneed until the colour is even.
- Now remove the cake from the fridge, lightly spray the cake with water so the fondant will stick to the cake.
- Using some cornflour on a work surface, and roll out the fondant icing. Keep moving the fondant around so it does not stick to the work surface.
- Pick up the fondant icing, I did so using my rolling pin, and lie it over the cake. Smooth the top with the hands, ensuring there is no air bubbles caught between the fondant and the cake.
- After smoothing the icing around the cake, trim off the excess fondant icing.
- Now take 150g of white fondant icing and kneed until it is soft, roll out until 2mm thin. Cut the fondant icing into a wiggly shape and place this on the top of the cake.
- Using the left-over white icing, colour the majority into a pale yellow colour and a small ball into a raspberry pink colouring.
- Roll out a long sausage of pale yellow, and add this to the cake. Repeat with another strip.
- Make small strips of the jam colour and add to cake just above the yellow sausage.
- I added some of these to the base of the cake and also added some white ones too.
- Then colour 4 small balls of icing for the sprinkles.Add these to the top of the cake.
- I added the sprinkles to the side of the cake and the base of the cake as well and then the cake is finished.