Last month, it was my dance teacher's 50 year anniversary of teaching, (yes, she's 64 and showing no signs of stopping!) so our Musical theatre classes at my dance school put on a floor show for her to celebrate.
For the presentation of gifts at the end of the second night, I decided that I wanted to make something extra special for this lady who means an awful lot to me and has taught me for years. I knew cake would be a good idea for this 'special present' as she is a huge fan of my cupcakes that she has received in the past for her birthday and at Christmas. The pressure was on for this cake however for several reasons. Everyone at the show was going to see it, it was my first time doing a whole cake in fondant and it was for a very special occasion so it was important that I didn't mess it up!
I knew this cake was going to be time consuming so it was a blessing when school was closed on the Thursday before the show for strike and Friday as well for teacher Training Day.
My day started off early on Thursday as I got up and got ready to prepare the Madeira cake. I hadn't made a lot of Madeira cakes before and the last one I made was a tad dry so I searched the internet to try and find tips for making sure the cake stayed moist.
One tip I found was to fasten 4-5 layers of newspaper around the outside of the cake tin. I was a bit apprehensive about this as I thought the newspaper would just burn but it seemed to do the trick!
First I creamed together the sugar and butter by hand.
Note to self: Invest in electric hand whisk, will save time, arm strength and will prevent incredibly painful burns on hand which lasted for a week.
Hand pain was obviously worth it however as cake came out looking fab if I do say so myself.
Day 2 was decorating day, the day I had been dreading! got on with it however and started rolling out the white fondant to cover the cake.
So my fondant was a little lumpy but I had no cake smoothing tool. All in all I didn't think it was too bad for a first effort.
Next I dyed a chunk of fondant pink to make the ballet shoe for my cake.
I used ClassiKool Gel paste in Dusky pink. I always use gel pastes as you only need a tiny bit to get a strong colour and the colouring never affects the taste unlike some supermarket food dyes. they can also be bought really cheap off the internet. this one only cost me £1.50 off Amazon.
Now I'm going to be honest, I was really happy with my ballet shoe when I first made it but now looking back at it I'm quite appalled with it. The fondant all cracked around the back of the shoe and on the ribbons and the shoe was just far too big for the size of the cake!
Anyway with the shoe added to the cake, all that was left to do was to pipe the icing onto the cake.
Whenever I fill a piping bag I always put the bag into a pint glass as this makes it SO much easier to fill I mean seriously, you should try this the next time you are piping a cake.
For the writing, I just used glace icing as it was easier to use than buttercream.
Any way, here's the end result!
It could have been better but practice makes perfect is what I say. Miss Atherton seemed overjoyed when she received the cake so that was the most important thing to me, giving something back to her after everything she has done for me.
