Fairy birthday party cake

Serves:

many

Ingredients

• 200g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 å_ cups caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 å_ cups plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence
• å_ cup raspberry jam

Icing

• 200g unsalted butter
• 8 cups icing sugar
• å_ cup milk
• Red food colouring
• 1m ribbon
• 6 butterflies
• 12 flowers
• 3 fairies
• Sliver cachous

Method

Preheat oven to 180å¡C. Butter and line two round 23cm cake tins. In an electric mixer, beat butter for 2-3 minutes until pale in colour and creamy.

Add sugar one third at a time, beating well between each addition.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for about a minute between each addition.

Add the vanilla essence and beat until combined.

Sift flour and baking powder and add half to butter mixture with half the milk.

Mix until well combined, then add the remaining flour and milk.

Pour the batter into the two cake tins and bake for about 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Cool cakes in pans for about 5 minutes, then turn onto cooling trays, remove lining.

Icing

Cream butter until pale and smooth. Add the milk and half the sifted icing sugar.

Beat until well combined.

Add the remaining icing sugar and beat until mixture is light and fluffy.

The mixture should be a spreadable paste; if it is too dry add some more milk, if too wet add more icing sugar.

Add drops of red colouring (one at a time!) until you get the shade you want åÐ I used about 6 drops.

Decorating

When cakes are cold, place one cake on a cake board, spread with the jam and top with the other cake.

You may need to slice some cake off the top to make them flat.

Use half the icing to cover the top and sides of the cake, making sure to fill in any gaps between the two layers.

This is called “crumb coating” and makes putting the final layer on much easier.

Put the cake in the fridge (a tricky business just before a party!!) for 30 minutes.

Use å_ of the icing to put a final layer on the cake.

Put the remaining icing in a piping bag with a rosette tip and pipe little flowers around the top and base of the cake.

Tie the ribbon around the cake, making sure you choose the best decorated bit to be the front!

Decorate with butterflies, flowers, cachous and fairies.

And enough candles for the little (or big!) birthday child.

Notes:

• I will not lie, this cake (with cupcakes) took me a good 5 hours to bake, ice and decorate.
• But you should have seen the look on her just-turned-3 face:åÊ”Mummy, this is wonderful!” Ah, all worth it.
• I use a concentrated vanilla extract rather than vanilla essence, much nicer.
• I made a second batch of cake and used it to make 24 cupcakes.
• There was enough icing leftover to ice the cupcakes.
• If you do this, you might need extra decorations.
• A fresh raspberry and cream filling would be lovely ‰ÛÒåÊbut you would have to be able to keep the cake in a fridge.
• Freeze any leftover cake (decorations removed) for 2 months.
• Recipe created by Melissa Hughes for Kidspot.