Animal Print 21st Cake

Well, this was a bit of an adventure outside my comfort zone - decorative icing! Worth it though for the finished result and it was Mollies 21st ('baby' sister!!). You'll need apricot jam to brush over each cake to help the icing stick :)

• Tiger cake - for this layer we need around 1.5 boxes of fondant and plenty of orange food colouring. It took a long time to incorporate it evenly throughout the icing but we got there in the end (the same goes for the black icing). Paint the sides with water to help the black icing stick. It really was just guess work for the black - we started with straight lines using a pizza cutter. Then we just did random curvy lines - short, medium, long etc and stuck them on. 

• Leopard cake (1 box) - this layer was painted using a mix of food colouring and vodka. The main icing was white fondant with a little bit of brown food colouring to create a 'tan' colour. Then it was a case of painting circles in brown and half circles on the outside with black.....or something like that.

• Zebra cake (3/4 box) - this followed the same 'method' as the tiger cake but with white and black. Good Luck! haha. 

I didn't actually use cake boards between each layer but I would the next time as dismantling the cake was a bit of a disaster...who cares though, it all got eaten in the end. 

Chocolate Biscuit Cake (12 inch) - Tiger

550g butter

300ml golden syrup

450g chocolate

400g digestive biscuits 

400g rich tea biscuits

1 large packet of maltesers

• line the tin with greaseproof paper before you start.
• melt the butter, golden syrup and chocolate in a large bowl over a pan of simmering water.
• to a very large bowl add the biscuits and maltesers.
• once the chocolate mix is ready, pour it over the biscuits and mix to combine.
• I recommend eating 5 or so biscuits from each packet... there was a LOT of biscuits in this cake.

Chocolate Cake (9 inch) - Leopard

185g butter

330g caster sugar

2½ tsp. vanilla essence

3 eggs

75g self-raising flour

225g plain flour

1½ tsp. bicarbonate of soda

80g cocoa powder

280ml buttermilk

Chocolate Cake (7 inch) - Zebra 

165g butter

300g caster sugar

2 tsp. vanilla essence

3 eggs

65g self-raising flour

200g plain flour

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

70g cocoa powder

250ml buttermilk

Chocolate Cake Method

• preheat the oven to 180°C and line each baking tin with greasproof paper. 
• beat the butter, sugar and vanilla with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
• add the eggs one by one, ensuring they are incorporated each time. 
• transfer to a large bowl.
• alternatively fold in the flours, cocoa powder and bicarb with the buttermilk.
• transfer to the prepared tins - bake th 9 inch for 1¼ hours and the 7 inch for 1 hr 10 minutes.
• always test the centre of your cakes with a skewer, if it comes out clean - its baked! 

Happy 21st Birthday Mollie!
19/092013

♥ ♥

Wendy

XO

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