Anyone tried this naked cake from m&s?

[Dermadirj]

Hey has anyone ordered the naked cake from m&s, and did you like it? How did you decorate it? Would you mind sharing pics if you did?

Or am I being daft getting a birthday cake from them?Naked cake from m&s

Yes had it as my wedding cake decorated with fresh flowers, it was delicious and looked amazing. The staff at the venue couldn't believe it was an M and S cake and said they had set out cakes for weddings that cost a fortune and didn't look half as good

Decorate with flowers or strawberries!

I thought the point of these cakes was that you decorate themselves? You always used to be able to get plain fruit and sponge cakes from M&S/Waitrose to order, so you had a good base for DIY decoration.

Naked cakes are definitely a thing - not designed to be iced. You usually see them decorated with flowers and/or fruit.

Yes, my friend got it for her husband’s 60th birthday, it was so delicious I have asked for it for my 50th. She just stuck some fruit round it & a 60th birthday sign on the top, from Etsy. Didn’t get a photo, but you can find loads of ideas on Pinterest xx

It looks lovely, reasonably priced and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such universally positive reviews.
I’d put flowers on and/or a nice cake topper off Etsy.

These are nice simple birthday ones

My wedding cake was 4 tiers of trad iced fruitcake. We assembled. Looked & tasted good. (Divorced though!)

Yes! Had it last week for my son’s christening and it was bloody beautiful. Really moist and flavoursome and had loads of compliments. It was actually bigger than I expected in real life. Decorated it with some fruit and gypsophila and a topper from Etsy and looked lovely.

I think it looks good! personally I like icing and would prefer one slathered in buttercream, but a lot of people prefer less, and this would look lovely with flowers etc on. I make a lot of cakes and think this is good value for a professional looking, freshly made cake. I'd say go for it!

@Dixiechickonhols thanks for the pic inspo!

That must have looked lovely, but there is a bit of a risk to adding gypsophilia to cake - it's toxic and can cause (usually mild) breathing issues and skin irritation. Would have been immediate so obviously no harm done!

Just wanted to add this in case people assumed from your post it was edible.

Yes its massive!

Hello, I’m very mean ( broke) but find that 2 chcocolate birthday cakes from lidl. Do the job really well for about 6quid each.
I sliced off their topping. Put them on top of each other so it was ginormous! Put it on an upside down plate, covered top and sides with smooth topping (spread with a hot wet knife) then added fruit, flowers etc .it actually looked and tasted better than the cake MIL brought from a professional baked for 45.which was dry. Fooled everyone!

Slanty oven

I'm a crap baker. I bake the cake, then slice a bit of the risen top off and turn it over, so the bottom is the top, and I get a nice flat top and sharp edges 👌

🙄

It looks very pretty but the lost of ingredients is pretty scary reading.

😂 this made me chuckle

Looks like it's 1x 8 inch cake and 1x 6 inch from the description.

I reckon £15 is about right for ingredients.

3 layers rather than my usual two, so I think it would take 10-11 eggs so £3, and 675g butter, plus probably another 6? oz at least for the buttercream. So call it 4 pats - £8. (£11)

Plus 675g flour, 35p if you use value flour which I find fine. 70p if you have to buy the bag specially. (£11.35)

Sugar about 80p, £1.20 if you have to buy a whole bag specially. (£12.15)

Icing sugar, I think I would need at least 16oz, so probably 1x 500g bag would do it (90p). (£13.05).

Baking powder, negligible if you have it in already, £1.50 if you don't.

Vanilla extract, probably need quite a lot - maybe 4 teaspoons - for something this big which could easily be £1.50 fir even that much if it is decent quality.

A few tablespoons of milk - negligible.

Add a bit of oven time and I think you'd be sitting round the £15-16 mark if you didn't have to buy everything from scratch.

I enjoy baking so I don't think costing my time up for that would be helpful.

My cake would also have only 7 ingredients as opposed to 15:

Flour
Eggs
Sugar X2 types
Butter
Vanilla extract
Baking powder
Milk

Saying that, if I can't be bothered, or have a lot to do in the run up to a party a shop bought cake can be a great option and it sounds like this one is pretty tasty!

Update - we got the m&s naked cake!

It was a fluffy sponge with a not-sickly vanilla buttercream. Actually it was quite nice that the buttercream was creamy and mild rather than chock full of sugar. But the cake was a bit one-note on its own as there isn't any jam or anything in the cake. Its just vanilla buttercream between the layers and on the outside. I served it with a raspberry coulis which gave it a nice kick up the b though.

No regrets in getting it. I'd probably try the chocolate one next time.

That looks great Op, hope you had a lovely birthday.

Yum.

I think the one-note is a great idea - customise with whatever you like. Lemon would have featured for me.

Hope you had a lovely party - beautiful display - and thanks for updating 🎂

I think it looks great

Beautiful 😍

You can hire baking tins, boards and stands for a few quid for a couple of days.
I made a friend's wedding cake, three different cakes all under chocolate ganache on a three-station cake stand (the cakes weren't stacked together because I didn't want to faff around with dowelling etc) and it was decorated with fresh flowers -- cream roses and trailing cream and green ivy. The stand was hired too.
It did cost quite a bit but that was mostly because of the large quantity of good quality chocolate needed; anyway it was my present to the happy couple.