Birthday Girl

You may remember some weeks ago, I made a gigantic fruitcake for my grandmother's 90th birthday, which I had been maturing in a box and feeding brandy. Well, last week the birthday cake construction continued. On Thursday I made a scaled back (so's it would go in a 15cm cake pan) version of this lemon cake, the idea being it would be the top of a three tier cake (this is the same recipe I made for A's graduation cake a while back).

On Friday, I made a scaled back (to fit a 22cm cake tin, so it wasn't that small) version of this chocolate cake, for the middle tier. I took a full day off work to make it and ice all three cakes and thank goodness I did! This chocolate cake is delicious--however, it takes forever to put together and sugar paste is an ill-behaved substance that needs so much coaxing to look nice! By the end of the day my kitchen looked like a herd of baby elephants had been rampaging through it, I was covered in chocolate, and unable to string an interesting sentence together.

However, few things smell as good a baking chocolate cake, so it wasn't all bad--in fact, I definitely enjoyed myself, and sampling the batter was an amazing bonus (although I am, sadly, allergic to chocolate).

In One Piece...

And here it is, fresh out of the oven and cooling on the window sill, looking as though butter wouldn't melt...








Shortly afterwards, in a glorious victory of optimism over common sense, I, pressed for time, thought it was cool--it'd had two hours by the open window--cut it when it was still a little warm and soft, and ended up with a structurally dubious cake. This led me to abandon the stacking plan and just make three differently decorated cakes, which actually worked fine. (Never have I been so grateful for a flower cutter.) Grandma liked the fruitcake, and fortunately the brandy in the cake did not get her tipsy and my cousin CD methodically ate two slices of chocolate cake in front of me to show how good it was (she is 8). I must thank cousin R for help in displaying them (the fresh flowers would never have occurred to to me) and a couple of wise friends who advised me what to do when the fruitcake looked as though it might be more booze than cake. Grandma, it was a pleasure to do for you, and I'll need at least fortnight off to make what I have planned for your hundredth birthday!