Birthday Cake

otherwise now know as 'bob builder cake'. Small girl turned two so we needed a cake. So far I've found cakes the biggest challenge, the pritken style fruit cake is ok, but I didn't think it was birthday cake material. This recipe is modified from the Australian Womens Weekly 'Kids Birthday Cakes'. I've given the quantity for one cake (ie enough for a 18cm round tin), for this cake I tripled the recipe and baked it in a 21 x 31 cm tin.



125g Butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 tsp No Egg
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup of milk, plus 2 tbs

Beat the butter, vanilla and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Mix the No Egg with the flour, then stir in the flour and milk in two batches. Bake in a moderate oven until cooked. Leave in tin for 5 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool.

I found a 'Bob' image on the web, sized it to fit my cake, printed and cut it out. This I used as a template to cut the cake. The cake was iced using Orchard White Icing from the supermarket. I thought about using a butter cream, but this was pretty easy to drap over the cake. Must remember next time to brush the cake with something sugary to help the icing stick.

I then made pin-pricks through the paper template to make a guide for the decorative icing. Here I just used plain chocolate icing, it was too late at night to mess around with colours, and I quite like the monochrome look. I used an icing bag with a plastic nozzle, which meant when the icing started getting a little firm I could pop it in the microwave for a few moments. This sort of icing doesn't stick as well as royal icing, but I couldn't think of any other options.

Chocolate Icing

1 cup icing sugar
1 tbs boiling water
1 tsp butter
1 tbs cocoa

Melt the butter, add the rest of the ingrediants and warm very gently on the stove.

The hardest thing was deciding where to put the candles, they ended up in the hat. The cake tasted pretty good for something without eggs and the birthday girl was delighted.