Showstopper!

In November, my mum assigned me to making her friend's birthday cake, as a surprise. My mum secretly arranged a few nights away with the birthday girl and all her friends, and I was needed to make the cake. One of the things I needed to be careful about was that the birthday girl is gluten free, so I needed to check all the ingredients had no gluten in. I decided to make a gluten free chocolate cake, so I started researching into gluten free recipes, and if anything I was going to decorate the cake with had any gluten in them too.

The sugarpaste decorations

Two months to go!

I started making some sugarpaste decorations for the cake today. The only reason I have made them so early is because they need to dry out, especially the numbers, because they are quite thick and they need to be completely hard all the way through. If they aren't, they will snap and crack when they are standing up. 

I got out some of my sugarpaste, and kneaded in some green food colouring, but I wanted it have some more colours in it. I thought for a bit, then decided that I would do something with with some multicoloured sprinkles. I found a pack of four different kinds in the cupboard. To help them stick to the numbers, I had to first brush the sugarpaste with water, then scatter the sprinkles on top. They wouldn't stick just like that, so I got out my sugarpaste tools and used the ball shaped one to press each sprinkle induvidually into the sugarpaste. Thankfully, it worked, even though it took ages!

A month to go!

I started making the balloons today - they are going to be stuck round the sides of the cake (hopefully!) All I did was roll out some of my sugarpaste so it was quite thin, then I made a paper balloon template so all the balloons would be the same size. I used one of my other sugarpaste tools to cut round the template, them left them out while I cleared up. It can actually get surprisingly messy with sugarpaste - I have to use icing sugar to stop the suarpaste sticking to the fondant. That gets in all the cracks of the work surface, and if I'm using water, sometimes I spill it, which of course makes the icing sugar really sticky. 

It did take a while to clear up, but once I had finished, I sat down at the table with some letter stamps, some edible gold glitter, some edible ink pens and the sugarpaste balloons. I used the letter stamps to print words into the balloons, then I coloured them in with my pens so they showed up a bit more. On some of them I sprayed edible glitter so they will sparkle on the cake!

The burnt cake

3 weeks to go!

I made a gluten free cake for the first time today, because I know that they can sometimes go wrong. Unfortunately, it did! I found that the mixture was a little thicker than usual, which made it harder to smooth out in the tin - it was sticking to the spatula, so I got uneven amounts of cake mix in each tin. In the picture, the left hand side of the top cake is a lot thinner than the other cake, which means it was unfortunately burnt ☹️! I didn't realise that it was burnt when I took it out the oven - they both looked like brownies do when you take them out of the oven - cracked and overcooked looking, so I thought it would be ok, I thought it would behave the same as brownies do, as the mix was the same consistency as a brownie mix. But when I came to take the top layer cake out of the tin, it almost started crumbling in my fingers! I made the icing, because I didn't think it was that burnt, but when I cut it, the cake suddenly made a crunching noise as I cut through the top layer. I was really confused, until I bit into the cake and found out how burnt it actually was!

Plus, the cakes were actually quite thin - so I think next time I will make two mixes so I will have 4 cakes. I will also make twice the icing, and then cover it in white fondant. Then I am going to stick the balloons round the side with royal icing, and the 40 on top with more royal icing. I might also cut out some shapes with coloured fondant and stick them on, but only if there is space and if there isn't enough colour on there.

2 days to go!
I have just made the real cake - the actual one!! 😄😆 I used a different recipe than the one I used before, and it made a bigger, better and un-burnt cake, so that also meant I only needed to make one mix. I used a recipe from Coeliac UK - here is a link to the recipe:   https://www.coeliac.org.uk/gluten-free-diet-and-lifestyle/recipe-database/gluten-free-cake-making/

The day before!
I decorated the cake today - in the end I decided not to stick the 40 on top. It is too big and would just stick off the edges, so instead I decided to just put it on the tray next to the cake.

I covered the cake in fondant, then stuck blue stars made from fondant onto the top. The balloons I made a while ago I stuck round the side, and I also stuck on a band of blue fondant round the bottom. I placed the 40 on the tray, and voilà! Here is the finished showstopper cake:

The Showstopper!!!