Shirley's party advice thread part 2

[stealthsquiggle]

...can I take the liberty of starting another thread, since the other one filled up?

DrsW that is awful - I cannot imagine our GPs surgery doing that - they would sort the paperwork out later.

You are just jealous of my cake pop maker, Blathers - dry indeed - just you wait until I have piles of lemon drizzle cake pops [sticks tongue out]

They do look very good....

I'm sure yours won't be dry but the ones I tried were. Even DS wouldn't eat them!! Obviously, if one of us tried them, they'd be much, much better.

I'm willing to trial yours if you need an outside opinion

Oh wow. I have had not the slightest interest in making cake pops until now. Now that I have seen that link I am going to have to spend £20 of my Christmas money on that amazing machine. Any suggestions for knight themed cake pops welcome....

By the way i'm also planning to get the adjustable square cake tin from Lakeland (does various sizes, up to 12 inch) - has anyone got this? Has good reviews on amazon but I thought is check in case anyone can recommend personally, as it's about £28. I don't have any large square tins though, and I thought it'd come in handy as I have many years if birthday cake baking ahead of me.

Silver - yes, yes, yes - that Silverwood adjustable tin is an essential of life. Get an extra set of dividers, if funds run to it.

Just realised I sound about 12 mentioning my 'Christmas money' . I still get cash off parents and some other relatives for birthdays and Christmas as I'm a pain to buy for, then I can spend it on crap like this without feeling guilty about wasting money

Thanks stealth. Why do I need more dividers?

Extra set of dividers gives you more options. I use mine to bake 9 * 4" square fruit cakes in one go for teacher Christmas presents, amongst other things.

Ah, of course.

Cake tin, dividers, cake pop machine and black icing are in my Lakeland shopping basket. Is there anything else I need from there while im getting free delivery? Is that cake release spray worth getting?

Shirley (who we haven't seen for a long, long time!) swears by the cake release spray.

cake release spray is good for fiddly shapes - but then I am not generally a fan of fiddly shaped cake tins, because they limit the decorating possibilities. I did however discover by accident that if you drop a thin sheet of fondant over a still hot warm fancy shaped cake (one a bit like this, in my case) then it moulds itself quite nicely to the cake without much intervention.

BTW - Silver - I had a hunt for knight-themed cake pops and didn't find anything very inspiring - how about cannonballs ?

You think that's fiddly! Try this

I "decorated" mine at Christmas with a shake of icing sugar and some smartie baubles.

Greasing it up with butter seemed to work but I'm definitely getting some cake release spray for this year.

That's the "spruced up" tin, isn't it, Blathers? My daisy tin is actually more like that - a cast aluminium one and deeper than the silicone one I linked to, but I couldn't find a link

It is indeed. I got it for my birthday (in May) last year as obviously it's far too late to make on if you get it as a Christmas present :)

I would have bought it for myself but a £25-30 tin you can only use once a year was a bit too extravagant for a 'because I want one' buy

I've made chocolate pizza! Milk choc base with marshmallows and smarties and white chocolate "cheese".

I put the cheese on last though and I think I should have put the smarties on last as they're hidden now and it looks quite bland.

Still, I'm sure I could send it to DW and make a new one

Definitely you need to keep trying and send all the eventual rejects to DrsW

The cake has all gone rather wrong. The bits on the top are too big and the sponge has all sagged a bit so the sides aren't straight.

I'm not happy

Will post a photo later, got to take the DCs to a birthday party now, but don't hold your breath to be impressed.

Is it too late to rescue, Blathers? could you salvage the top bits and make a bigger, shallower base for a different shaped lego brick, maybe?

(note that I haven't seen a photo yet so have no idea if it actually needs rescuing or not!)

Doing photo now. I ran out of time before taking the children to the party so had to go with it.

Luckily, it's only the family visit one not the main party cake so it's not the end of the world - I have another attempt to redeem myself

Okay i heard the words choc pizza!!

You are being waaay to harsh on yourself i think that looks good. Granted the bits are big so looks more megablok but think its fab!!! But will ds mind?

You'll never guess where i spent yesterday....... Yes you guessed it casualty. By ambulance this time! Dd2 had fresh blood squirting out her bum. I nearly keeled over i tell you. They have now decided that she is intolerant to cows milk protein via my milk. So i have to go dairy free or switch to an amino acid formula. The tin is miniscule! Anyway. Today dairy free and just had first normal poo from her in a week.

But it means i cant eat chocolate pizza! Sob.

DS likes it thankfully. I'm just a bit disappointed because it doesn't look like the one in my head IYSWIM. Just hoping it tastes good now. The red block is Chocolate cake layered and crumb coated in choc fudge frosting and the yellow blocks are Lemon and Poppyseed cake crumb coated in Vanilla frosting. You can see where I split and filled the chocolate cake as there's a bulge in the icing so I didn't bother with the lemon ones and they do look better. I didn't have a right size cutter to do the blobs on top any smaller so I'd have had to make the cakes over again to fix it and didn't have the ingredients or the time to do it.

I did get to have a good play with my cake leveller though so at least I didn't have wonky blocks to add to my list of gripes with it :)

Fresh blood sounds very, very scary! So glad DD has improved now that you're dairy free. DBro is intolerant to CMP so I'll ask his advice on Dairy free choc and get back to you

Blathers - official verdict from my DS who was peering over my shoulder when I looked at the photo was 'that is really very cool' - since he usually just points out the flaws in cakes, I would take that as a compliment IIWY.

DrsW how scary. I hope they have correctly identified the cause - and FWIW, I have definitely heard tell of dairy free chocolate.

Thanks Stealth Jr. That's really cheered me up :)

Can I kindly ask for advice?