So when I left you last, things had gone disastrously wrong. My cake had been on the verge of bursting into flames and taking the whole pub with it, and my confidence was shot. It was 9pm on a Wednesday night, and all the shops were shut. I’d run out of flour and desperately needed to start baking a new cake. Luckily Zoe came to the rescue and went home to fetch me my missing ingredients. I decided as the oven in the pub was hot enough to melt iron inside, and they didn’t actually have any of the utensils required, I couldn’t do any worse going home and baking the new cake there. I collected my stuff together and headed off.
I’ll save you the boring details of the next bit. I got the cake mixed very quickly and put it in the oven. This time it came out 1hr 45 minutes later looking spot on. I put it on the side to cool and then went to bed.
One nicely baked cake!
Yum - Butter cream - who can believe that something that nice is made from just butter & icing sugar. I was amazed!!
Thursday night soon came round, and it was now time to decorate the cake. After flicking through the books that Zoe had lent me, I decided to decorate it like a hamburger. It looked quite easy to do compared to some of the other designs, and let’s face it – the easier the better! It also seemed pretty appropriate as Zoe was having a BBQ to celebrate her birthday, so a big beef burger cake wouldn’t seem out of place.
I started following the instructions. Firstly I had to chop the cake in half and then carve the top bit into the shape of a burger bun. At this point I had to take a quick trip down to my mum’s to borrow a decent knife. The ones in my drawer at home weren’t up to the task. Surprisingly carving the cake was easier than expected, I’d half expected the cake to crumble apart, but it was spot on and before long was looking just like a burger bun. Then things got tricky. The cake had to be covered in icing, and the icing had to be coloured like bread. Now for some stupid reason, the supermarkets only sell white icing and then food colouring to mix with. Fair enough I suppose! But did they sell bread coloured food colouring – did they fuck!! No!, the best I had to pick from was red, black, blue, green, and yellow. Luckily I’d managed to also steal a bottle of orange off Zoe, but still even with these colours how the hell was I going to make it look like bread. As part of my job in web design I’ve had to study colour theory, but it’s one of those things I’ve never managed to get my head around. As far as I’m concerned mixing blue and yellow might make pink for all I know. I’m useless! I decided to start with the brown and then once this was kneaded in (yes, I used the word kneaded. I know all these posh culinary words now), I kept adding different colours until I had anything that might resemble a bap colour. The gods must have been looking down on me though, as with a bit of orange added, and then some yellow, I all of a sudden had the perfect colour. I couldn’t believe it, something had finally gone right! I rolled out the icing and then placed in over the cake. It looked fantastic. I did the base, and then referred back to the instructions.
The completed bun
Next on the list was to make lettuce. I mixed some green into the icing and then rolled it really thin. To get a lettuce effect I used crumpled up kitchen foil and pressed it all over to add some texture. I then attempted to place it on the cake. Bugger!! It was stuck fast to my cutting board. I’d forgotten to put flour down before I rolled it. After about 5 minutes of scraping it off the board, I tried again this time with the flour!
Next was the burger. This involved getting a shit load of icing and dying it brown. My god, it took forever. I kept adding more and more colouring and for about 20 minutes the only things that seemed to be getting browner were my hands. Eventually though the colour took, and I rolled it into a burger shape and placed it on top of the lettuce. Now the next bit was tricky. It showed in the book using the ends of different sized straws to create a texture on the burger. I only had one straw but managed to improvise and found a chalk lolly and used the end of that. I then spent the next 30 minutes jabbing them into the icing to make it look more burger like.
The lettuce and burger added
The last part of the exercise was the tomatos. The instructions said to use a circular template to cut out tomato’s and then gave all these fantastic instructions on how to decorate them. By this point it was 1am and I was tired and the last thing I had lying round the house was a ‘circular template’. I did however have a can of coke, which when pressed into the icing left a circle!! My genius astounded me yet again and I began making my tomatoes using this brilliant method.
Finally the tomatoes were finished and it was time to put the cake together. I couldn’t believe it. It had taken me 5 hours but it looked fantastic. For the first cake I’d ever baked I couldn’t have been happier. God knows how I’d done it but the thing actually did look like a burger! I went to bed a very happy man.
Almost finished - just missing the tomato and sesame seeds
The completed cake
A close up
Me & my pride and joy!!
And so that was that, Number 27 done! I’d baked Zoe’s birthday cake. A few days later when I gave it to her she was really impressed, and nobody at the party actually believed I’d made it. They all thought I’d been to Asda and bought it. For those doubters amongst you I’ve put the photo’s of the whole process online here. It was fun making it but next time somebody wants a cake I may point them in Danni’s direction and save myself the hassle!
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