I received a special delivery from France last week – some dried organic lavender flowers from Kate’s mum. I had an enjoyable Monday afternoon (while Ivy was asleep and my mum nipped to the shops for us) baking lavender cupcakes. They are another recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and I got on better with this one, although I think it only makes nine decent cakes rather than the suggested twelve. My mum pointed out of course that perhaps there’s less cake to make room for more icing. Cupcake icing is so mega sweet that I think you can do with less so I made 3/4 of the suggested amount. You can play with this though, but I think Kate would be happier with more cake and less icing. I did leave the lavender to infuse with the milk overnight – I think it’s worth doing it for the maximum time. I seem to keep altering the methods the book suggests – Dan agrees that it’s sometimes a bit odd to whisk up mainly dry ingredients with a hand whisk in an open bowl – obviously it’s going to go everywhere!

They are surprisingly not as overpowering as you might think and have a lovely calming subtle flavour, well that’s my opinion.

Cakes:
120ml whole milk
3 tablespoons lavender flowers
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
40g unsalted butter
1 egg
12 small springs of lavender (or a few flowers for the top)

Frosting:
25ml whole milk
1 tablespoon dried lavender flowers
250g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter
couple of drops of purple/blue food colouring

Put the milk and lavenders flowers for the cake mix in a jug and leave in the fridge over night (or as long as possible – a few hours). Do the same with the milk and flowers for the frosting. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
Put flour, sugar, bp and butter in a bowl and rub in the butter until a sandy mixture (don’t whisk it as they suggest – what?!). Strain the lavender infused milk and add slowly to the mix beating well, add the egg, beat well. Spoon the mixture evenly between 12 (9) cupcake cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden and bounces back once touched. Leave to cool completely before spreading on the icing.

Lavender frosting: Beat together the icing sugar, butter and colouring (I get it started with a wooden spoon or you have a snowy  kitchen again). Strain the milk for the icing and add slowly to the mix beating well. Beat for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy and ready to use.

(The icing’s a bit too turquoise – needs to be more blue, oh well have to experiment more)

So after all the experiments and tweaking and worrying, the big day for Dan and Fran arrived and I think it worked out ok! I made the base and the middle layer on the Tuesday before and the top on Wednesday night after having my cast taken off (hooray).  I think the cakes sitting for a couple of days meant they condensed a little again (this was evident after the wedding too – the remaining cake seemed to be more dense each day) but I don’t think it was a problem.I iced the cake the day before the wedding down in Devon and loved taking advantage of the huge country house kitchen complete with Aga of course.

I think the middle Chocolate and Creme de Cassis layer was my favourite, very much like a luxurious chocolate brownie, very rich. I may have overdosed on the white chocolate mud cake however!

What I enjoyed most, apart from seeing my two dear friends get married, was decorating it with real roses and foliage. I found the process rather cathartic before rushing off to bridesmaid duties (mainly painting nails and drinking champagne, tough). The ‘figures’ on the top are customised cinema tickets: Admit Dan, Admit Fran, significant because they met during their film MA. Oh, and yes… that is a sword.

So, congratulations Dan and Fran and it was honour to bake your cake!

Well, I’ve been a bit quiet because unfortunately I managed to break my wrist a month ago. Not only is it slightly awkward looking after a small child but it also makes baking a little tricky. I have managed however to make three test bases for Dan and Fran’s wedding cake! I was struggling with the white chocolate mud cake base – it’s so huge that the centre really did seem to turn to mud, or perhaps more the texture of clay. I seemed to have cracked this though by reverting to the fan assisted oven. I’d decided a while ago that a conventional oven cooked cakes more evenly – this is of course true with your average sized cake but not the beasts I’d been working with.

I couldn’t resist having a go at Mary Berry’s American wedding cake just in case it was a better base. Unfortunately again I didn’t use the fan and the centre was more like a Warm chocolate pudding! Still, it had a great reception from our builders – Dougie said ‘it just melts in the mouth’ – hmmm, perhaps that’s not the desired effect but it still tasted good.

I only made the base which took a whopping 22 eggs.

Ingredients:

17 eggs, separated
5 whole eggs
1 lb 9 oz (700g) Caster sugar
2 lb (900g) good plain chocolate, broken and melted
1 lb 1 oz (475g) ground almonds
4 1/2 teaspoons black coffee (I left this out as Dan doesn’t like coffee)

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees, lightly grease and line a 30cm tin.
Measure yolks, whole eggs and sugar into a large bowl and whisk until thick and light. Add slightly cooled chocolate and coffee (or not).
In a separate bowl which the egg whites until stiff, not dry and fold carefully into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 1 1/2 hours.

I didn’t bother icing the cake as it was just a test but here’s the ingredients for the three tiers (you need huge bowls):

30 eggs, separated
8 whole eggs
2 lb 13 oz (1.27 kg) Caster sugar
3 lb 9 oz (1.6 kg) good plain chocolate, broken and melted
1 lb 14 oz (840 g) ground almonds
7 1/2 teaspoons black coffee
8 oz (225 g) apricot jam, sieved

Divide the mixture between 15cm, 23cm and 30cm deep round cake tins, lined with greaseproof paper. the large cake will bake for 1 1/2 hours (cover loosely with foil for an hour), the medium for about an hour and the small for about 45 minutes. They can all go in the oven at once – the large on the middle shelf and the other two on the top (depending on how big your oven is of course!)

Icing:
2 1/2 lb (1.25 kg) plain chocolate, broken
1 lb (450 g) unsalted butter
Melt the chocolate slowly in a bowl over boiling water add the butter and stir until melted. Place each cake on a cooling rack and pour over the icing, smoothing with a palette knife.

Well that’s enough awkward typing for me, the next post should be Dan and Fran’s successful wedding cake in a week or two!

This cake is certainly for the brave, especially when you read the ingredients. It is my first attempt at the base layer for Dan and Fran’s wedding cake, basically triple the quantity of this cake I made for Dan’s birthday last year. It’s not quite right yet, you can visually see the difference – a bit dense in the middle, stodgy even. Baking such a huge cake (30cm tin) which is very liquidy when you put it in the oven, takes some tweaking. I covered the cake with foil for the first two hours and then removed the foil and baked for another  hour and a half. I think I could have left it in for another half hour and considering advice from Dan and people on Dan Lepard’s forum, perhaps increase the temperature at the beginning then lower it.

Well, I’ll just have to make another and somehow the huge beast will be consumed. I need a birthday in May – any takers?!

Here’s the ingredients – hold on to your hats:

750g butter
450g white chocolate
1,320g caster sugar
750ml milk
675g plain flour
225g self-raising flour
6 eggs (lightly beaten)
3 tsp vanilla essence

Combine the butter (chopped), chocolate, sugar and milk in a large saucepan and heat gently until smooth – stir with a wooden spoon. Transfer to a large bowl and leave to cool for 15 minutes.

Whisk in the flour, essence and egg, pour into a lined 30cm cake tin and then experiment with the baking time! I had the oven at 180 and covered it as I said but will try a warmer oven next time and then reduce the heat half way through.

It seems to have got the thumbs up from those who’ve tried it so far but i think it needs to be less sticky in the middle. Mainly because it actually sunk a little which would be no good for the base. Well hopefully the next lorry load of ingredients will produce a successful cake, wish me luck!

So, I am charged with the wonderful (if not slightly daunting) task of creating Dan and Fran’s wedding cake. I think I’ve settled on the base but there are other layers to decide on. This Mississippi Mud Cake is very rich and dark and heavy  – now will it be too dense and sink into the base below? I hadn’t really considered this before but I imagine I’ll leave as late as possibly to assemble the cake. Mind you, traditional wedding cakes are pretty weighty with all that fruit.

This recipe is again from my little Australian Women’s Weekly chocolate cake book (full of gems) so the measurements are a bit odd – converted from cups. I didn’t have any coffee or chocolate liqueur so used Creme de Cassis instead an experiment. I think it works rather well and adds a bit of glamour which is always welcome at a wedding! I’ll save you a bit Dan.

Ingredients
250g butter, chopped
150g dark chocolate, broken into peices
440g caster sugar
250ml hot water
80ml coffee-flavoured liqueur
1 tablespoon coffee powder/instant
225g plain flour
35g self raising flour
25 cocoa powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin.
Combine butter, sugar, chocolate, water, liqueur and coffee powder in a medium saucepan and stir with a wooden spoon until melted and combined. Pour into a large bowl and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
Whisk in the sifted flours and cocoa until combined then add the egg. Pour into the tin and bake for about 1.5 hours. Half way through you can cover the cake with foil to avoid it over-browning (I should have done this).
Leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes and then turn out onto a rack.