Okay, so although most people celebrated the Jubilee yesterday, it's actually the official Jubilee on Tuesday with the parade and such. Therefore this post could still come in useful... if not you can just look at the cakes.
As Rosaline said, we love the Queen and the Jubilee and just everything about this ridiculously long weekend. And what better way to honour the Queens Diamond Jubilee than with cake. My street had a street party, and although I avoided the cupcake competition (it was full of five year olds which was slightly embarrassing) I did make a cake and lots of little cupcakes as our contribution to the food side of things.
I thought I was being very original with my cake design, but it turns out almost everyone had the same idea. However one can never have too much cake, and it was all eaten by the end of the evening which in my view indicates success.
(I made the cake in two halves so these ingredients are for one half)
8oz self raising flour
8oz caster sugar
8oz margarine/butter at room temperature
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
A few drops of vanilla extract
A pinch of salt
The icing covered and filled the very large square cake so it can be halved if needed:
12oz unsalted butter
24oz icing sugar
A splash of milk
A few drops of vanilla extract
A jar of strawberry jam
One punnet of strawberries
One packet of blueberries (you may need 2 packets depending on their size)
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease the tin
2. Cream the butter and sugar together slightly, before sifting in the flour and baking powder and adding the eggs, vanilla and salt.
3. Beat using an electric mixer for 2 minutes until completely mixed.
4.Pour into the tin, making sure to cover the whole thing and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. When a skewer is inserted it should come out clean and when pressed the cake should spring back.
5. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes (in the mean time begin to make second half!) and then tip onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
6. Make the second half if necessary by repeating steps 2-5.
7. To make the icing, beat the butter until smooth. Sift in the icing sugar a little bit at a time and mix constantly so that the icing sugar doesn't go all over the kitchen and the cat. Add the milk and vanilla about half way through.
8. When the cakes have cooled, heat the jam in the microwave for 20 seconds and spread over one half, making sure to cover it evenly - you won't need to use the whole jar.
9. Spread about half of the buttercream on the other half, making sure to evenly distribute it and reaching right to the edge so that when sandwiched it splurges out a bit.
10. Then you need to put them together so that the jam and cream meet. It's easiest to pick up the sponge with the jam and put it on the buttercream sponge in my view, and if it breaks it doesn't really matter because you're going to cover it with icing anyway!
11. With a small amount of the icing you create a crumb coat by thinly spreading it across the top and then lightly scraping the excess away with the edge of a palette knife.
12. Then spread the rest of the buttercream on top, reaching each corner.
13. Cut the strawberries in half and arrange the fruit as shown:
To add to the whole jubilee feel I used a cut up flag as a ribbon and stuck it around the edge :)
I also made jubilee cupcakes. The icing all went wrong so I ended up not piping all of it as I had planned. However I'd bought decorations and union jack cases which saved them, and they turned out alright in the end. It's the same recipe for the One Direction Cupcakes but I made about four batches. I also dyed the icing with red and blue liquid dye, which came out light blue and pink but I didn't want to alter it's taste. It would have been much better with gel dye!
I hope everyone had/is having a lovely Jubilee Weekend and is feeling just as proud to be British as us!
 |
| Finally, my absolute favourite picture of the queen! |
- Ellie x
No comments:
Post a Comment