February...

February came around fast... and what is February associated with? Valentines day!! I use every commercial holiday and over priced/excuse for presents day as an opportunity to make cakes relating to that day! Also being the hopeless romantic that I am, I made my boyfriend a Valentines cake. I was a bit apprehensive about how it would turn out because to date, it was the largest cake I would have iced with fondant icing ( and it wasnt even that big!) .

The cake baked lovely and the aroma coming from the oven whilst it was cooking was amazing.. you cannot beat the smell of home baking!!

I went for a sandwich cake with a buttercream and jam filling, classic and tasty.

One the cake was cooled and filling was done I began to decorate. Icing first of course... I rolled it out till the diameter was enough to cover the whole cake. I then put a thin layer of buttercream on the cake so that when the icing was put in place it would hold nicely. After placing the icing over the cake I used a new purchase of mine, an icing smoother (which really looks like a trowel that a plasterer uses to smooth walls!!) and smoothed the icing over the cake and worked the icing into a round shape so it was a smooth sheet covering the whole cake. These smoothers are available on ebay very cheap, I think mine was around £3 and it is brilliant!

I then dyed some of my leftover icing pink and made a rose flower out of it and placed it on the left hand side of the cake. To use up the rest of my icing I placed pink love hearts all over the cake and wrapped the cake in a Valentines Ribbon (which I also got from Ebay for next to nothing) and added a little message ' To my Valentine'. My boyfriend was chuffed. I was glad, as I think making something from scratch for your partner is so much more creative and loving than buying something commercial and silly from the shops! The cake was lovely (if I do say so myself) and the sponge came out perfect. Biggest cake achievement to date!