happy birthday bean

Well his birthday was more like a month ago. However fate somewhat intervened and I never got round to baking him a birthday cake.

Luckily, I'm like an elephant when it comes to cake. I never forget. Well Bean certainly doesn't.

Please forgive my rather sad attempts at photography. (I can't seem to get any better. Grr) I promise it looked and tasted better in real life.

I knew I wanted to make something a little special and remembered seeing this on Pinterest and wanted to have a go. Oh how I adore Call Me Cupcake. Seriously swoonworthy food. Very much worth a look see!

You may just be able to make out the Happy 30th! on the little banners!

So what's the surprise?

Picasion

T'was a little too windy for outside photographs.

Ta da!

The excitement was the exciting layer-ness.

I must tell you it isn't as difficult as it might look.

For the cake. Any "white cake" will do. Now white cake seems awfully like an Americanism to me. What's even scarier is that some recipes call for boxed cake mix. Seriously? How difficult is it to make your own cake? Not very. Exactly!

I sort of followed the delicious recipe on Call Me Cupcake but changed a few things and then used the wonderful gel colourings to make the colours so strong. Sadly for Bean I tend to only ever keep pinks or purples in my store so a pinky/purple cake it was! Now the gel colourings are rather strong so only a little drop is needed at the start and then perhaps an extra drop at each stage.

I only had 8 inch tins so this was a slightly bigger cake than I envisaged but ah well!

I (well actually Bean) levelled out the cakes and then I stacked the layers which a yummy layer of blackberry jelly (why is there never blackberry jam) to sandwich them together. In hindsight it would have been even better to use a little of the buttercream too!

For the icing. I wanted something with a little different (which is why it is not a delicious clean white). I decided to make a Swiss meringue buttercream with a little blackberry liqueur. I sort of followed this recipe from Epicurious but only made about a third of the quantity. Also I used salted butter because I think it tastes nicer! I think the blackberry adds a lovely flavour to the sweetness and the salted butter cut through all that sugar!

So what do you think? I am little impressed with the little cake. It was rather tasty. Bean might say, "it's pink, it's certainly pink." Well thanks.

Indeed I am rather inspired to have a go at something a little more difficult. Watch this space. It could go disastrously wrong!

Oh and tomorrow wedding post-ness! Eeek. I'm a little scared!

(I do have to show you the invitations I made for Bean's party. I was rather impressed with myself. Well not so much the invitations, rather their packaging! Soon.)

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