Well what an exhausting couple of days it has been. I am a bit under the weather at the moment but I really need to catch up with some work. Today has been my husband’s birthday and I needed to bake him a cake. I was hoping to record myself baking and decorating his birthday cake as I have something rather special in mind but that didn’t happen due to a much appreciated visit from a heating engineer and I didn’t want to fight for space in the kitchen. Needless, to say my timing has been out all week due to my husband taking a much needed break from work but this has caused him to be under my feet all week and I haven’t got as much done as what I planned. Nevermind, it is the weekend now so I may get some baking done soon.
I was wanting to bake some Marzipan and Sweet Mincemeat Muffins as a change for several reasons:-
- as a treat for my husband who loves marzipan.
- it was “National Marzipan Day” in the USA and this recipe would have been a great addition to the tea table to celebrate this day.
- I had marzipan and sweet mincemeat to use up in my kitchen and I thought this would be a good recipe to use them up in.
- I was going to try them as egg free muffins and see how they turned out compared to standard muffins.
However, I still haven’t made these muffins but I still intend to make them as it will be a good recipe to share. You will have to keep reading to find out when I share the recipe.
Back to the Birthday Cake, I decided I wanted to make something a bit different to a Pinata Cake like what I think he had hoped for so I baked a large chocolate sponge. From this I removed two pieces from the centre of the sponge, the numbers 5 and 0. I used a stencil to cut round with a sharp knife right through the cake. The pieces removed quite easily and then I covered the cake in chocolate ganache. I filled the number shapes with sweets of all kinds till they were overflowing (almost). After some more sweets were stuck onto the sides of the cake it was ready to hide from the children until party time.
I will share the recipe and some photos tomorrow of this cake as I have just eaten a piece with a cuppa and I can’t move. 🙂 It was delicious especially served with cream but the best part is that there is some left over for tomorrow. I am hoping to edit another video tomorrow and write up a recipe or two onto some other recipe sites, as well as, my blog. I will let you know more tomorrow, as I have several recipes to choose from, which I have taken many photos of showing the different stages of the recipe and these recipes are accepted on several different sites. Oh decisions, decisions what will I choose. 🙂