Birthday cakes

[titchy]

I've heard you can freeze sponge cake - has anyone else tried this? How long does it take to defrost? Doesn't it go all soggy? Also how long can it be left defrosted while I ice it? A couple of days? Basically I want to make a cake but cannot cut the sponge into the shape I want AND ice it within a couple of days of the party - far too stressful. So want to do it over a couple of days. Any experienced cake makers here (although I've probably already blown it by getting food colouring liquid instead of paste - where do you get paste from?).

Thanks all!

Titchy

You can buy paste and anything else you want for cake decorating at the Jane Asher shop
Sorry don't know if you can freeze sponge, but it shoudl last for a day or so uniced if you keep it in an airtight container.

I used Nigella Lawson's birthday cake recipe and made two, as I wasn't sure how much I would need (I was making a Thomas cake without a recipe and specialist mould - and a brio Thomas train as model!). As it was I only needed one so I froze the other one successefully and defrosted it overnight a couple of weeks later and iced with a butter icing. It was yummy - and not soggy at all! It's a wee bit firmer than a normal sponge cake - but very tasty and better than anything you get in a shop!

For the Thomas cake, I couldn't find paste (and had tried using liquid unsuccessfully as a substitute in the past - could only get pastel colours), so bought various packs of pre-coloured Royal icing and some tubes of writing icing. I couldn't get the necessary blue Royal icing, so bought a tube of blue writing icing which I smeared over a charcoal grey "mix" of black and white ready coloured icing. It actually worked amazingly well - and my Mum's advice of cotton wool for steam from the funnel was the finishing touch!

If you want the Nigella recipe, I could get it for you.

Sounds brilliant JanZ. Personally I find that most bought birthday cakes while looking great and pleasing the kids (I suppose this is what counts...) taste foul.

I often freeze sponge cakes with no problems at all.

Ooh replies so quickly! Thanks for the Jane Asher website prufrock, and yes I'd love the recipe JanZ. Any idea how long said defrosted cake would last once I'd iced it? Could I say bake and slice into shape this weekend, then freeze, and defrost next Thursday night so ice on Friday ready for the party on Saturday?

Or better still ice whilst still frozen and freeze the iced version?

Sorry to be so thick but the thought of 28 pre-schoolers with food poisoning fills me with absolute horror - nobody would EVER talk to me again, and certainly wouldn't come to any future parties. Oh the shame of it.....

You can buy ready to roll icing in any supermarket and colour it yourself. You can use liquid colourings but you do need quite a lot to make a Thomas cake or an Edward cake or a James cake. Lay your slab of icing on the worktop sprinkled with icing sugar. Poke a hole in the top and pour in the colouring. Gently squash it together then roll it with your hands out into a sausage, fold the sausage in half, roll it out again, fold in half, roll it, etc. It will initially be marbled but the colour will soon distribute evenly through the icing. If it becomes slimy or sticky, add a bit more icing sugar. You can then simply roll it out and mould it to your cake. You can smooth the icing onto the cake by dipping your fingers in cornflour and gently rubbing the surface of the icing as if you were polishing it.
Another favourite of ours is to use buttercream icing. Warm the icing up and add more icing sugar. When it cools on the cake, it becomes quite hard and can be cut and handled without making too much mess.
Sponge cake freezes and thaws very easily.
My DKS now make their own birthday cakes. We have a glorious mess in the kitchen and we usually end up with two brightly coloured kids, but it keeps them occupied for hours.
Good luck with the cake, it's great fun.

the icing paste is a bit like play-dough...I did some blue and it came outthe same colour as blue-tack...not very appealing. But we've mad pink hedghogs/mice/cats/elephants and left to dry a week or so before, then stuck candles in their heads and popped on a buter iced cake..yummy

Can anyone recommend a good novelty cake book? I'd like to make dd1 a 'shaped' cake for her birthday (a house or castle or something) and I've looked on amazon for a book but wondered if anyone had a good one they could recommend.

Ta.

Enid, there's a book list here

there are some recipes here

sorry, these are egg less, wrong thread!

Enid, there are two Australian Womens Weekly Children's party cake books which I would really recommend.

I have a Jane Asher one called (something like) "Quick Party Cakes" which is all done with minimal cooking - bought components and assembling them. I made DS 2 train cakes from it (one for home and one for nursery) and the nearest I got to cooking was melting chocolate.

There's some great pictures here: cakes

It's my birthday today, and dh and dd did some 'baking' yesterday. As dh has never baked in his life, I am very interested in what I am going to get at teatime - I'll let you know!!!

happy birthday susan! Hope you enjoy the cake.

Happy Birthday susanmt - it's my DD's birthday today too.

Happy Birthday susanamt

Sainsburys do packets with precoloured ready to roll icing - one packet has red, blue, yellow and black - perfect for 'James' engine cakes! You can also buy those tubes with squirty out icing.

It was messy cos dd decorated it herself and she is only 2 3/4, but it was yummy - well done dh!!

susanamt - Bless!