Birthday Cake

This post has been lurking in my 'to-do' list for the last month, forgive the time delay and enjoy!

So tonight's the night. The night I bake a cake for little owls 2nd birthday.

I have, um, not a lot of experience in the cake baking department but have somehow set my ambitions quite high this year.

I blame pinterest.

If I succeed I will be a cake baker extraordinaire.

If I fail?

I will be quite sad and pop to the supermarket on the way home.

Or get papa owl to bake one.

The cakes I have made have always come out a bit wonky so I thought I would have a go at a hemisphere one from Lakeland.

And I some how got it into my head that it would be really pretty if I baked a rainbow cake.

You know - those really pretty ones you see on pinterest?  Those tricky looking cakes...

Now the idea with pinterest is that people share tutorials on all these wonderful ideas, but for a novice like me, I was a bit scared to look, what if they were too hard?

So I buried my head in the sand and sailed up that famous river in Egypt.

But last weekend I realised I would be sad if I didn't at least try so I quickly ordered myself some pretty food colourings from and started seeking advice from my friends on facebook.

The cake tin said it needed a 6 egg recipe.  I have been told that you double the value for eggs and that gives you the ounces for butter self raising flour and caster sugar.  This is very much like a D grade maths GCSE question.

My plan is to make up a mixture for each egg, add the food colouring and then start again with the next mixture. 6 eggs = 6 colours, 7 in a rainbow but who can tell the difference between indigo and violet anyhow!

I'm a bit worried it won't fit but I've measure the tin and know it holds 3 pints so I'm going to check that the mixture for 1 egg is less than 1/2 a pint (been told also to aim for 2/3s full as cake should rise - haha!)

Wish me luck!

Recipe

1 egg

2oz flour

(1/2 teaspoon of baking powder)

2 oz sugar

2 oz butter

 

 Don't the colours look fab!  And the best bit is - they were going to fit in the mixing bowl!

 

 So now it was time to put it in the oven and wait... it felt like such a long wait...

 

I was pretty please with the result, it looked like the colours had merged, they weren't the straight lines I was hoping for,  but it did appear to still have some variance in its colours, so all was not lost, and besides - I'm a novice - I'm just pleased there was cake that looks like it was edible.  I covered it in chocolate, sprinkles, silver balls and a lion - Little Owl's favourite things - at least the shape wasn't a failure!

But then... when I cut into the cake and found....

Isn't this the best cake you have EVER seen?!!!!  And it tasted amazing too!  I'm chalking this one up as a success!