Elderflower and white chocolate cake: Free Cakes for Kids

Think back to when you were a child and celebrated your birthday. I’ll bet there was cake, and you can probably remember some of your favourite cakes as a child, right? I was obsessed with Sarah Lee Double Chocolate Gateaux and often had one of those for my birthday but I also remember very clearly when my mum baked several loaf cakes to make the shape of the number 14, decorated with chocolate icing. I have a feeling I remember a hedgehog cake with chocolate buttons when I was younger as well!
Some children aren’t lucky enough to get a birthday cake, for all sorts of reasons - money is tight, they are living in temporary accommodation without the facilities to easily bake a cake, their families have got a lot on their plate due to illness or disability or maybe the child is a young carer themselves and deserves a treat. Free Cakes for Kids is an organisation that links up local amateur cake makers to provide birthday cakes for underprivileged children and makes sure they get a homemade treat on their birthday, which makes them feel special.

I’ve written about Free Cakes for Kids before as I’ve been involved with the group for a little while. To find out if there is a local group in your town check out the website.
For a little while now my local group has been baking a cake once a week for an Age UK tea party at a residential care home. I was just about to go back to work after maternity leave (yes, there’s been a bit of a delay in posting this!) and knew I wouldn’t have much time to bake any more so signed up to do one of these as it fell nicely into my last week off when my daughter was doing half days at nursery, so I could bake the cake and deliver it while she was there.

I wasn’t doing any grocery shopping for the next few days and rather than make a special trip out (which is not as quick as it used to be before I had a one year old in tow) so decided if at all possible to use ingredients I already had at home. I knew I had an unopened bottle of elderflower cordial in the cupboard and that I had seen recipes for elderflower cake somewhere.

I made Lynn Hill’s elderflower cordial cake with white chocolate ganache from the original Clandestine Cake Club book - you can find part of the recipe online here though to see the whole thing you will have to buy the book!

I found it interesting that the cake itself doesn’t use butter; it seemed to give a light texture to the finished cake but of course I didn’t get to eat any as it was for Age UK!

The white chocolate ganache was a little tricky as first it was too thick to spread (I left it too long in the fridge) then it was too runny. I wasn’t happy with the finish and decided I needed to decorate it but not in a way that would be too time consuming.

 

I loved the idea of piping ‘hello’ on the cake, since this was for a tea party and wasn’t a birthday cake, so I used some melted milk chocolate and a tiny piping bag. I then got out my special flower piping nozzles that make beautiful shaped petals of different kinds - you don’t have to have any special piping skills as the nozzles do all the work! The purple flowers were a bit darker than I would have liked as I used a bit too much food colouring but overall I was happy with the effects and hope the residents of the care home enjoyed their cake!

 

D'lish Donut Shopkins Birthday Cake

Do you know what Shopkins are? If you have children then you might… if like me you are yet to become a parent then you can be excused for having absolutely no idea!

 

I’ve written before about the fantastic charity Free Cakes for Kids – I made a Rapunzel cake for a girl who otherwise wouldn’t have had a birthday cake.

 

Another request came through from the same group that I decided to volunteer for, for a child who would like a Shopkins cake, even though I didn’t know what that was. Shopkins turned out to be a collection of characters based on items you find in the supermarket – everything from cakes to fruit to a loaf of bread, bottle of bubble bath and even clothes and shoes. They have names like Suzie Sundaw, Mandy Candy and Angie Ankle Boot.

 

I browsed the website for a while until I was able to find a character I thought I could easily incorporate into a cake and remembered I had a giant doughnut cake mould I bought in the sale ages ago and had never used. There is a Shopkins character called D’lish Donut that looks like a pink iced ring doughnut with sprinkles (and of course arms, legs and a face) which I thought would be perfect.

 

The mould comes in two pieces - simply grease them and fill with cake mix.

 

I used a standard Victoria sponge cake recipe for this cake – as it was for a child, I wanted to avoid strong flavours or making it too rich and thought that the icing would be sugary enough!

 

 

 

 I filled the cake with jam and buttercream – the cake mould worked perfectly, turning out the bake cake into a perfect ring doughnut shape.

 

 

 

It wasn’t too hard to decorate – I decided water icing with pink food colouring might be too runny and not look very neat so I coloured some white roll-out fondant, cut it into a  circle large enough to go over the cake and cut a space in the middle. The arms and legs are also made of fondant, and I used some tiny plunger cutters to cut out diamonds from pink, blue and yellow fondant, and stuck them with a dab of water on top to look like sprinkles.

 

The eyes took a couple of attempts and my husband actually ended up helping with these! We made four circles of diminishing size in white, blue, black and white, and layered them to make the eyes. I then used black fondant to make a nose and some eyelashes and pink fondant for the mouth.
 

 

I put the cake onto a silver board and at the last minute decided to spell out the little girl’s name with leftover icing. I had a lovely email afterwards from the charity co-ordinator saying she had been really pleased with her cake – it was fun for me to make a cake for a child and to copy a cartoon character as I don’t get a lot of opportunity to do that (my neice is 8 months old so too young for cake) – and of course I was able to do something good and help a charity that hopefully made a difference and helped that little girl have a happy birthday.

 

Rapunzel Cake and Free Cakes for Kids

Have you heard of Free Cakes for Kids? No, it's not a company handing out free samples - it's a charity that helps disadvantaged youngsters have a bit of a treat on their birthday.

For many children a birthday cake is a luxury they don't get - or at least not a home-baked personalised cake with their favourite animals or characters. These days so many children seem to expect that and parents spend a great deal sometimes on their child's cake.

But it's not just about feeling left out among their school friends - many of the children this charity helps are underprivileged, either from families that are below the poverty line or living in temporary accommodation or women's shelters. For them, receiving a birthday cake is hopefully something that will bring a smile to their face, helping them to forget for a moment their hardship, and something that will bring joy to the rest of their families as well.

The way it works is that the parent or more often their school or shelter representative contacts a co-ordinator, and gives them some information like the first name and age of the child and a few things that they like. The co-ordinator then sends out the request to an email distribution list of local bakers and someone responds and volunteers to make the cake. The co-ordinator (in my area at least) will collect the cake from the baker and deliver it to the recipient.

You can find out more about Free Cakes for Kids and sign up to your local group by clicking on the link.

I signed up a while ago but usually by the time I saw the email (as I work full time) there was already a volunteer to bake. A few weeks ago I happened to be looking at my email as the request came in and so I responded - and the next thing I know, I had agreed to make a birthday cake for a girl about to turn seven, who liked Rapunzel and butterflies!

I had nearly two weeks' notice which was really handy as I was able to google Rapunzel cakes and realised that the Disney film Tangled is actually about Rapunzel. I knew I was going to have to make the cake on a day when I was working from home, which worked out quite well as I save time that day by not having to commute into central London (giving me back nearly three hours). Even so I wasn't going to be able to spend hours crafting Rapunzel out of icing!
I ended up ordering a personalised cake topper printed on wafer paper with the little girl's name and age, which I got via the internet. I actually baked the cake the night before and decorated it very early in the morning before I logged on to my computer to work.

Thinking that most children probably won't want a strongly flavoured or unusual cake I decided to stick with a vanilla sponge. The recipe I used is from the Sainsbury's Cake Recipe Collection book:

250g butter, softened
250g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs, beaten
250g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
I added a splash of milk as I like my cake mixture to be looser

Preheat oven to 180C and grease an 8 or 9 inch cake tin. Cream the butter and sugar and beat in the vanilla and eggs. Fold in the flour and baking powder and the milk and beat until smooth.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for around 25 minutes, testing with a skewer until it is no longer raw inside. Leave to cool in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack and split through the middle to make two cakes.

It made a decent 9-inch cake which when split and filled with vanilla buttercream made a good height cake (I was worried about it looking too flat).

I covered the cake with a thin layer of buttercream and then fondant that I had coloured lilac.

The cake topper sat nicely on the top (once I had levelled the top of the cake that is), moistened slightly with water (just a tiny bit) so it would stick to the fondant, and I coloured some extra buttercream and piped it using a star nozzle around the edge of the wafer paper.

 

I made the butterflies using a plunger cutter from fondant I had coloured pink and stuck them around the cake.

 

A week or so after the little girl's birthday I received a lovely message via the organiser saying she had been thrilled with her cake and was still talking about it a week later, and that the butterflies happened to be in her favourite colour. I was really pleased to think I had made a little girl and her family happy, even if they were complete strangers, and I will definitely be baking again for Free Cakes for Kids.

Reindeer Christmas Cards and Paperless Post

 

It's been a couple of years since I've had time to make my own Christmas cards - at least. This year I had a week off work in November to use up annual leave and spent most of the week tackling tasks around the house, but I did allow myself one whole day to do fun things - and spent a good part of that day making cards.

 

I've mentioned before that I got a great discount on a three-month subscription to three different card making magazines. Each one comes with free gifts and as it was getting close to the end of the year, the freebies tended to be for making Christmas cards.

 

This one, Cardmaking & Papercraft, came with a selectin of foil-finished cardboard pictures, frames and toppers. I thought it was a bit boring to start with - other free gifts have included rubber stamps and decoupage sets - but actually when you are making Christmas cards you often want something that won't take too long. Plus, the pictures were lovely and have resulted in some of my favourite Christmas cards that I've made so far.

 



 

 

 

 I copied the suggested designs in the magazine which were very good - I like this first one most of all. I used a piece of backing paper to cover a square white card blank, then stuck a pink sparkly frame at an angle. Using the largest reindeer card topper I stuck it on the front of the card and tucked a couple of corners through the frame - I love this effect. Then I cut small pieces of border pieces and stuck them across the four corners of the card. Finally I used a small circular card topper in the corner of the reindeer picture, and a sentiment topper across the bottom.

 

 This second card is more of a clean and simple design, again taken from an idea in the magazine. I covered a square white card blank with a piece of light purple paper that had a Christmas bauble design down one side, and stuck a border topper a few centimetres up from the bottom.

I used another large reindeer card topper again at an angle in the middle of the card, and a Christmas wishes sentiment tag to the left. I think the tag looks a bit odd on its own and in retrospect maybe needed some ribbon but I still quite like the card as it is.

 

Even if you enjoy card making as much as me, it can be really hard to find time to make cards. As I only managed to make a few, and had already bought some cards I wanted to specifically send this year (they have cows on, perfect now I'm married and Mrs Cowe!) so have decided to keep hold of these until next year!

I've just come across a website called Paperless Post which provides both online and printed cards like Christmas cards (as well as other stationery) which is donating to (RED), the charity which partners with retailers to send money to the Global Fund that fights HIV and AIDS.

Each purchase from the (PAPERLESS POST)REDChristmas collection supports (RED)’s fight for a world without AIDS. 8% of the price of every paper card and 25% of the price of every online card goes to the charity, which I think is a good thing for them to do, so I'm happy to help publicise the campaign (and have received no incentive or compensation for doing so).

Jammie Dodger Cupcakes

We had a bake sale for Macmillan at work recently and even though I wasn't going to be in the office that day, I wanted to take part. I decided to make cupcakes as I was going to have to do them mid-week after work, and I don't get home that early thanks to a long commute.

When there is a lot of choice in a bake sale, the things that go first tend to be the more indulgent-looking or more unusual. I remembered ages ago seeing some Jammie Dodger cupcakes online and knew there was a recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book .

The recipe in the  book explains how to make your own Jammie Dodger-style biscuits, which might be a fun thing to do one day, but I didn’t have time for that, so I bought a packet of mini Jammie Dodgers to use on top of the cupcakes. I remembered how good my cupcakes were that have an Oreo biscuit base and a Jaffa Cake base and decided to use a full-size Jammie Dodger in the base, before the batter was cooked, and also add a spoonful of jam in the middle of the cake after it was baked, which isn’t part of the recipe and is my own adaptation.

 

 

Here’s what I did

Makes around 15 cupcakes

 

For the cake:

15 Jammie Dodger biscuits

70g butter, softened

210g plain flour

250g caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

210ml whole milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

15 tsp strawberry jam (about 200g)

 

 

For the frosting:

15 mini Jammie Dodgers

500g icing sugar, sifted

250g butter, softened

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder and salt with an electric mixer. Normally I would cream the butter and sugar first then add the eggs; this way gives you a breadcrumb-like texture which I think gives a more biscuity-flavour somehow, which is just right for this recipe.

 

Pour the milk into a jug and beat in the eggs and vanilla, and gradually pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, mixing slowly as you go. Increase the speed of the mixer until you have a smooth batter.

 

 

Line a cupcake or muffin tin with large cupcake cases. Place a Jammie Dodger – with the heart facing up – in the bottom of each cake case, then spoon the cake batter on top until the cake cases are almost full. Bake for 20-25 minutes then leave to cool.

 

 

When the cakes have cooled, use a teaspoon to remove a little of the centre of the cake, retaining the part you removed in one piece. Add a teaspoon of strawberry jam to each cupcake, and replace the 'lid'.

 

 

 

To make the icing, beat the icing sugar and buttercream until smooth. I had intended to pipe swirls onto the cupcakes but ran out of icing (I thought I had more but didn’t!) so ended up spreading it on top to make it go further. Top with a mini Jammie Dodger.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as she runs the Food Calendar challenge, and this month was the Macmillan Big Coffee Morning.

 

 

Chocolate Igloo Cake with Polar Bear

Some guys I work with are off to Sweden for an Arctic Biathlon, to raise money for charity - which involves teams competing in husky sledding, ice fishing, orienteering in low light and so on. It sounds like a really tough challenge!

To raise money they held a bake sale at work and even though I wasn't going to be around that day (apparently I missed some people dressed up as polar bears) I offered to make them a cake. I saw a cake last year that made me want to bake a cake shaped like an igloo and this was the perfect time!

I used this recipe from Tesco to make the cake itself, though I decorated it differently. It makes a large cake, that I cooked in a 2 litre Pyrex bowl; the cooking time was pretty accurate and the cake turned out well.

I did have to level the top (or bottom rather) as it rose quite a lot:

Very neat!

I thought that even if it was quite a moist cake it would be a lot to eat without any filling so I split the cake through the middle and filled with some chocolate buttercream.

I didn't have any doughnuts and while I thought Tesco's cake looked good, I thought it would actually be quite tricky to make without ending up with too much blue, and who wants a blue igloo? Instead, I decided to decorate it my own way.

I made some chocolate buttercream and spread it all over the cake, then covered it with roll-out fondant.

Using a knife I scored lines in it to represent the blocks of ice.

I made the entrance to the igloo with another block of fondant and placed the cake on a board I had previously covered with fondant and left to go hard. A blue ribbon around the board was the finishing touch.

I wanted to make a polar bear (actually I wanted to make a penguin until I remembered that they don't live in the Arctic!) and figured it was quite simple to model as I've made various animals before.

I started with a large egg shape for the body and a smaller egg shape for the head, then rolled out sausage shapes for the arms and legs. I rolled a small ball and pressed it flat to stick on the end of the feet as paws and used the same technique for the ears. I used a little bit of black fondant to make patches on the ears and feet and to make the face. I sat my polar bear next to the igloo.

As the finishing touch I found a packet of snowflake sprinkles (I can't remember where I got them from!) and stuck some on with edible glue. The guys taking part in the Arctic challenge were really impressed with the cake and pleased to have it help with their fundraising.


This month for Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, we have chosen the letter N, and decided that it can also stand for Noel - any Christmassy recipe or bake - so I am sending in my igloo cake.

I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's a very Christmassy recipe.

 

I'm also sharing this with Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, as the cake of course contains eggs!

 

 

The theme for Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK, is festive fun, so this cake is just right to enter.

 

 

Floating Malteser Cake for Comic Relief

 

 

Comic Relief is a hugely popular UK charity and the work it does to tackle poverty and social injustice around the world is fantastic. It has been going for 25 years this year and Red Nose Day – and now Sport Relief too – has become part of the British lexicon. Comedians and celebrities have been doing “something funny for money” since I was a child; last year Sport Relief (which takes place in alternate years with Red Nose Day) raised a whopping £71,800,000.

This year Red Nose Day falls on Friday March 13 and people all around the UK are being encouraged to “make their face funny for money”, whether that’s wear a wig, face paint, or have their eyebrows shaved off for charity. Comic Relief has also teamed up with the Great British Bake Off to help people organise bake sales in their communities or workplace – there’s nothing the British like more than a good old bake sale.

For that reason I’ve found myself pledging to make cakes for two different bake sales, one helpfully taking place the day before. I thought I’d share with you the cake that I’ve made, so if you are having a bake sale (or a bake off – this is something of a showstopper!) on Friday, you’ve still got time to make it.

Maltesers is one of the official partners of Red Nose Day this year and everyone loves chocolate, so I decided to make a maltesers cake. I’d seen pictures of cakes before which looked like they had a bag of Maltesers floating in the air, pouring chocolates onto the top of the cake – and since Red Nose Day is all about silliness and fun (with a good cause) I thought this would be the perfect cake.

My friend Ros aka The More Than Occasional Baker has made one of these cakes before and as I was fairly short of time, I went to her site to find out how to do it. I even used the same chocolate cake recipe she had used so I can’t claim any originality with this recipe at all – please hop on over to Ros’s site! The only change that I made was to use purely Maltesers rather than M&Ms as well.

The cake was pretty easy to make; you might be better off making it a day or so in advance and keeping in an air tight container if like me you are assembling the cake after work, as it needs to be completely cold.

Making the cake - see link above for recipe. In goes the chocolate, cocoa powder, butter and water.

Flour and eggs of course, and sour cream is the added ingredient to make this cake extra moist and tasty.

Ready to go in the oven

Now cooling

So this is the tricky part... to assemble the cake you need a lot of chocolate ganache. A lot.
Heat 300ml double cream in a large pan and when it is just simmering, take off the heat and add 600g chocolate. You can use plain or milk; I used milk as I prefer the flavour. Stir in the chocolate until it has melted.

Leave the ganache to cool before using - I put mine in the fridge for about half an hour.

Spread about 1/3 of the ganache on the bottom layer of cake and gently sandwich the other cake on top. Then spread a thin layer of the ganache around the side of the cake and stand up Kit Kats around the sides, facing inwards so the flat side faces outwards. I used 36 Kit Kat fingers for what I think was an 8-inch cake. You can either put them completely around the cake or as I have done, leave a gap at the front.

Spread about 2/3 - 3/4 of the remaining ganache over the top of the cake.

Push a plastic drinking straw into the cake, far enough in so it is stable but so you have plenty sticking out the top. Cover the top of the cake with Maltesers. Don't forget to keep one of the empty packets as you will need this later!

Slowly start building a tower of Maltesers. Dip each one in the chocolate ganache so it has a little dot of the chocolate mixture on it. Carefully stick to the straw, building up from the bottom. I found that I had to put the cake in the fridge after every two or three Maltesers, otherwise they would start to slide down.

Finally use some more ganache to stick the empty Malteser packet to the bent top part of the straw and finish sticking the Maltesers so the straw is completely covered. For the finishing touch I stuck more Maltesers down the front of the cake and on the cake board to look as if they were overflowing.

I'm really pleased with this and think this is the perfect cake for Comic Relief - it's fun and Maltesers is one of the official sponsors. I just hope it makes it into work on the train and bus OK!

I'm sharing this with the Alphabakes blog challenge which I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker; she has chosen the letter S this month and this cake uses sour cream.

I'm also sending this to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for Bookmarked Recipes.

 The theme for this month's We Should Cocoa is chocolate layer cakes so this fits in perfectly. The challenge is hosted this month by Sarah at Maison Cupcake on behalf of Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog.

 The cake also uses eggs which is my excuse to send it to Dom at Belleau Kitchen for his new challenge Simply Eggcellent.