Baking a cake is something that everyone can do and is great for many occasions. For this particular blog and recipe, we are going to be doing it around the theme of going back to work or school. Something that has been unusually cut short. We want to share with you our 3-layer cake recipe and how you can become the best cake decorator. This baking can even be made into a DIY school workshop or a science school workshop.
Start by baking three cake flavours. Either two vanilla and one chocolate flavoured or vice versa (two chocolate and one vanilla)
Ingredients for a back to school cake
The first ingredient you will need is 190g butter or margarine softened. Secondly, you will need 190g caster sugar. For the cake you will also need 4 small free-range eggs. Coupled with 190g self-raising flour. Lastly to flavour the cake you will need vanilla extract and chocolate powder.
Step 1
Heat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 and line three 18cm/7in cake tins with baking parchment.
Step 2
Cream the butter and the sugar together until pale. Use an electric hand mixer if you have one. Beat in the eggs.
Step 3
Sift over the flour and fold in using a large metal spoon.
Step 4
The mixture should be of a dropping consistency; if it is not, add a little milk.
Step 5
Divide the mixture between three bowls. Depending on how many you are choosing to do like vanilla and how many as chocolate powder add in a tsp of vanilla and 3 tsp of chocolate powder.
Step 6
Spoon the mixtures into the ready prepped cake trays and gently spread out with a spatula. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Allow standing for 5 minutes before turning on to a wire rack to.
Now for the exciting bit, the decorating!
The classic buttercreams. Start between each layer of cake doing a lovely thick layer of buttercream. Then do a crumb coat of buttercream around the whole of the cake (this will allow all the crumbs to be secured into the cake), leave this in the fridge and then after it has set do a second coat. After you can leave it plain or pipe on some swirls. A beautiful fresh look is to place a small bouquet of fresh flower on top. Just remember to give them a clean before.
Smarties in a whole. In cake one and two cut out a whole, after stacking these two layers together using buttercream fill in the whole with smarties/skittles/chocolate coins. Then put the third cake layer on top. Cover the entire cake with icing and decorations. If you want to create a ‘pot of gold’ themed cake, you can decorate with rainbow laces, edible glitter and anything sparkly. Finally, when the cake is cut into it will spill out the filling creating a magical and fun cake. The constructing of the cake is like a STEM school workshop.
The final cake decoration is making the most of chocolate and sweets. Chocolate-fingers, KitKat can be used to surround the cake. Moreover, a simple chocolate gouache which is cholate and single cream melted together, creating tasty chocolate, cream top. This cake looks great when you are doing thing such as charity workshop for events.