SURPRISE!!!

As some of you may well of read, I have been keeping a few things secret from you all, basically just so my Mother-in law (and maybe my Father-in-law too, don't know if he reads this blog or not?) couldn't see this!

My Mr Owen and his brother and sister have been organising a surprise Ruby Wedding Anniversary for their parents for the last few months and yesterday was 'The Big Day'. However, they finally decided that due to many reasons such as us all turning up along with huge amounts of food, bevereges, glasses and a .... CAKE.... they decided to tell them the weekend before. It was a shame we didn't Skype them to tell them all about it as we would have loved to have seen their faces but apparently they were really touched by all our efforts. The only thing they didn't tell them was that I was making (well, attempting) to make them a cake. It didn't turn out too badly I don't think, especially as when we were doing the icing (Anthony and I) we were dancing around in the kitchen to 'Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini' looking a bit like this:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/s/?view=att&th=13ffb34036dd6911&attid=0.1&disp=attd&safe=1&zw

Sorry if that doesn't work. However, if anyone knows how to add it in properly, please let me know. 

However, here is the story of 'The Cake'  .....

It all started Last Thursday 12th where I made a trial run cake, minus the icing, and I took it into work for all to try and check that it was ok. This one I added red colouring to the sponge, but it didn't work out too well so I decided to get rid of that for 'The real one'. I just added butter icing to the top and in the middle. I also didn't cook as much of the cake as the it was only a sample so it was a skinnier cake.

 

 

So the real fun started on Thursday just been (18th) where I stayed up late baking two cakes - Mr Owen had much fun cleaning out the bowl and spoon, reminded us both of when we were little. When I baked cakes with my sisters we had to do it when whoever was baking with us weren't looking and before they took it away to clean it up!

 

 

As you can tell, lots of eggs were needed to make the cake. I only had 5 left over from this pack of 18....

 

Then on the Friday one of my 'besties' came over and we had lots of fun decorating them!

 

As you can see from below HE made farrrrr too much of a mess! This picture documents the fact that he poured out too much icing sugar. I think he was singing his Ding Dongs at that time! I did feel sorry for him though because when it came to putting the dots on the cake, I became a bit of a cakezilla, a bit like a bridezilla but with cakes instead!

I had spent LOTS of time researching and finding out what was the best way to ice and tier cakes. And then I narrowed down the essentials to use, which included a smooth-down tool, stick things, to put the cakes on top of each other and then the little cutters to make the perfect circles. The icing didn't come out too bad in the end and any blips we covered with dots - hence my trip to Hobby Craft! In some areas there were an obsessive amount of dots - we just crossed our fingers and hoped that no one would notice.....

 

And as per usual, in my cheeky but sweet way, I turned around to Mr Owen and said, I'm done, the cleaning and washing up is all yours!! But, I didn't actually leave it to him. Mr Ding Dong and myself did it all as we are nice people.

 

 

And then this is the final product:

 

 

 

I used the recipe for a red velvet cake found here:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/three-tier_red_velvet_17795

I tweaked it to suit what I felt tasted better.

 

And, as you may all be able to see, I had a little problem with the red dots thanks to the British summer and them getting stuck to the containers!

Have a good week,

 

Love, Mrs O xxx