One special first birthday cake

Apart from the fact that Andrew is one year old (where did that last year go?!), I can’t believe that I’ve actually made my first ever birthday cake for a child of my own. This is a special moment for me, because I’ve been looking forward to it for so long. My mum used to bake amazing birthday cakes for me and my brother – my all time favourite has to be the swimming pool in the shape of an 8 for my 8th birthday swimming party. So I’ve wanted to carry on the tradition with my own children for quite a long time. And now I finally got to do it 🙂

I came up with this idea one day quite out of the blue. I think I was just out walking with Andrew in the buggy and it came to me. It’s basically 3 classic sponge cakes (20cm round) cut into the letters ‘o’, ‘n’ and ‘e’, and then decorated with buttercream icing in different colours and sweets. Here’s a break down of the process, based on Delia Smith’s classic Victoria sponge recipe, and cupcake icing from Cook with kids by Rob Kirby.

Ingredients

cake

220g self raising flour
220g sugar
220g margerine
4 eggs
few drops of vanilla essence
3 20cm round cake tins, greased and lined at the bottom with greaseproof paper
Three 20cm round cake tins greased and lined with greaseproof paper

icing

260g icing sugar
165g unsalted butter
red, blue and green natural food colouring

Method

Cake

Blend the margerine and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
Margerine and sugar blended together
Beat the eggs, and then add to the mixture little by little, beating thoroughly as you go.
Beaten eggs added to the margerine and sugar mixture
Add the vanilla essence.
Work in the flour until you have a smooth pasty mixture.
Flour added to the mixture, to make a smooth pasty mixture
Divide the mixture evenly between the 3 cake tins.
Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown on top.
Three sponges just out of the oven

Icing

Whip the icing and butter together until you get a pale, fluffy ‘cream’.
Split the cream into 3 roughly equal portions.
Icing evenly split into three bowls
Add a few drops of each food colouring into each portion, until you get a strong colour.
Three bowls of icing coloured with different food colourings

decoration

Once the cakes are cool, remove from the tin.
Using a sharp knife, cut a hole in the middle of one cake to make an ‘o’, then a hole in the edge at the centre bottom of one to make an ‘n’, then two holes, one just higher than the middle and one at the right side on the edge, to make an ‘e’.
'o n e' cut out of the round sponges
Spread the icing to completely cover the cake, including down the sides where you cut bits out.
Add sweets to decorate.
Finished cake - 'o n e'

'o' - milk choc buttons in the shape of a star with some pinky/red writing icing (not very visible here) around the edge of the star

'n' - jelly beans and white writing icing make some bunches of baloons

'e' - white choc buttons with hundreds and thousands on them (I LOVE these!) and some orange writing icing to contrast with the blue buttercream

The cakes went down well at our teatime party with family. The red food colouring tasted slightly of pepper (as in red pepper) to me, probably because it was paprika extract (no artificial E-numbers on sale these days!) But the men didn’t seem to mind it, and ate it anyway! I stuck to a piece of the blue ‘e’, as the white choc buttons are my favourite. Andrew also had a small piece of the ‘e’, after we sang Happy Birthday to him, and he really enjoyed it, munching away on it happily. My first go at kids birthday cake baking seemed to go successfully, so I’m happy 🙂

I’m going to try and fit in another birthday related post soon, but for now, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this part of Andrew’s first birthday.