help needed with mini cakes

[darkandmoody]

someone please save my sanity, i have been making cakes for years but i am really struggling with mini cakes, i bought a silverwood 2" cake tin and have tried it out using both fruit and sponge recipes.

the sponge came out shaped like an egg timer, all shrivelled in the middle, the fruit cooked fine but i cant ice the things, everytime i go to put the marzipan on it breaks at the top!!! its driving me bonkers.

any usefull tips on how to do these would be great before i go completely insane and the tin goes in the bin.

thank you

With mini cakes I normally use old marmade tins or baked bean tins for size as long as they are not rusty. Take the bottoms off and then you have removable bottom once you're greased it.

Normally I only ice the top and not the sides on mini cakes as they get over-handled and things go wrong. Roll it out and cut to size first (tins can be cutters to). Don't know whether i'm any help or not.

I was thinking about buying one of those silverwood cake tins....though maybe they don't sound such a good idea. Sorry I don't have any useful info re your original post, but I've been trying to suss out how to make those lovely mini cakes as well. I saw in Mich Turner's book on Couture Wedding Cakes that she made a normal sized round cake and then cut out circles using a biscuit cutter. I think in her case the cakes must have been quite a dense consistency as if they were a really light sponge they would just break up. Maybe if you made a slightly denser recipe eg like a chocolate sponge, the fudgy type with melted chocolate in it, it might work better.

Do all the sponge ones you make come out egg timer shaped or is it just the ones in the middle of the tin...ie is there uneven baking across the tray?

For the marzipan on the mini fruit cakes if you look at this link: 74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:1JZeqzMJ3JoJ:www.apieceofcakethame.co.uk/view_products.aspx%3Fci d%3D37+wilton+cut+outs+mini+cakes&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
and scroll down to mini pan square cutter - you can buy a template for the marzipan or sugarpaste that fits over the whole of the fruit cake. Don't know if it would help but looks interesting.

I've been saving up to get one of these Silverwood tins and mighty disappointed if they don't work...the pictures they show of the cakes that they produce look really fab.

oh no! i have just ordered mine. has anyone tried this recipe although this is for a square one rather than a round cake and it is for 2" and not 2.5" ?

In these days of equality between the sexes, I am a male mum! I am also the Commercial Manager of Silverwood's, the bakeware people. Great as these discussion fora are, a quick call to the manufacturer (or an e-mail via the manufacturers web-site) would soon produce the answer you are after. We are not just here to manufacture, but to help as well.

Well if you're here to help why on earth didn't you post a helpful reply to the OP here? Why does she have to call the ehlpdesk?

I made mini cakes for PIL's wedding cake tower and did the 'one huge cake cut into leetle rounds' route as recommended by Mich Turner and Peggy Porsen. Half were a dense choc cake, half were my normal (Delia) Madeira cake and they were both firm enough to cope with being cut like this (pic on profile).

I've been lookng at the silverwood multiminicake pan as the other method resulted in a huge amount of wastage, but this has put me off... hope you find an answer!

Having only just joined Mumsnet, I missed all the earlier communications, but am pleased that Fruitbeard's cakes worked out well. No problem with cakes being firm enough, but a cut edge can result in the cake drying out more than is preferable, which a baked edge would reduce (with a fruitcake, a cut edge would result in fruit acids leaching through to discolour the icing).