Birthday Cake(s)

Last weekend one of my best friends turned 40.  We've known each other for over 20 years (which is a scary thought) and is one of those friends who I can not see for a long time, but when we meet up we just pick up where we left off.  So when her husband planned a surprise party I really wanted to make her birthday cake.  It was only after I volunteered that he told me her twin was coming (2 cakes), and that it was also their Dad's birthday (3 cakes), and that with the guests there would be 60 of us (3 cakes and 2 lots of chocolate brownies).

To top it off it was my birthday too :) (4 cakes and 2 lots of chocolate brownies then).

Birthday Cakes

The fruit cake was intended for their Dad and is Nigel Slater's recipe from the Kitchen Diaries.  He suggests a variety of fruit and I used apricots, figs, prunes, glace cherries and mixed peel in addition to the traditional raisins, sultanas and currants. The joy of a fruit cake is that it can be made in advance.  In this case I only left it for a couple of weeks and fed it with brandy 3 times.  I decided to top it with a mix of fruits and nuts and glazed with hot apricot jam thinned with a splash of water.  Much easier and quicker than my normal marzipan and royal icing and it looked and tasted fantastic.

Key ingredients	Straight out of the oven
Easy and colourful topping

The other cakes were a bit more complicated and had a LOT of chocolate :).  They were all based on a basic chocolate sponge.  The variation came in the fillings toppings and chocolate collars.

The dark chocolate cake was sandwiched toghether with chocolate orange butter icing and then covered with a dark chocolate ganache which was also used to pipe the roses on the top. I then tempered white chocolate and used it to make an 'abstract' chocolate collar to go round the outside.	Chocolate Cake with a chocolate orange filling
Chocolate Cake with white chocolate ganache	The white chocolate cake was the same sponge but with no orange in the butter icing and then covered and piped with white chocolate ganache and surrounded with a dark chocolate collar.
My birthday cake was more straightforward but tasted good. Chocolate cake (what else) sandwiched and topped with a salted caramel creme patissier, drizzled with caramel and decorated with salted caramel popcorn.	Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake

The brownies were Nigella Lawson's recipe from the Domestic Goddess book - half with walnuts and half with with white chocolate chips.

I've never seen cake disappear so quickly.....

5 minutes later....