Category: decoration

Posted in Cakes, decoration

Easter cake (no tools required!)

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

When you’re first getting into cake decorating, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking you need a million special tools to create a professional looking cake.

Well STOP RIGHT THERE. Before you go rushing to Lakeland (the motherland), and break the bank on a turntable, airbrush and edible pigments, give this no tools Easter cake a whirl.

This super cute Easter cake is a great one to make with young sprogs because no special tools or skills are needed, what a win!

Now before you all start coming for me, I did use a piping bag (I know, the shame), but no nozzle and the same effect can be achieved by snipping off the end of a zip lock bag!

Before we get crackalackin, here’s some nawti kitchen goss:

Kitchen Goss

A new month, a new obsession, this time it’s below deck. Sorry, how have I not discovered this gem of a tv show before now?!? It’s everything I love – drama, relationships and boats – all rolled into one. #boatlover

The obsession has taken a new turn and I’ve now convinced myself that yachting needs to be in my life.

Yes, I was the world’s worst waitress so the silver service of the stews might not be for me.

Yes, I have the upper body strength of a malnourished 12 year old so deckhand would also be a struggle.

Yes, I nearly drowned trying to surf in Scarborough so sea safety isn’t my forte.

But haters gonna hate, the ocean is my calling. See you on the waves #yachtie #seeyounextcharter #steworcrew 😈🤘🤪

Anyway back to decorating…

I’ve made a short vid showing how to recreate this cake at home, but if you really love reading there are written instructions below!

Ingredients

  • Cake recipe of your choice (I did coffee because I’m officially an adult and like the taste of coffee now)
  • Buttercream (enough to fill and ice the cake, and to make little chickies)
  • Piping bag/freezer bag/zip lock bag
  • mini eggs (I used a total of 6 small bags, but I rek like 2 big ones would be fine)
  • Sprinkles
  • Food colouring (yellow, black, orange)
  • Optional – cocktail sticks
  • Optional – gel icing pens (available in any supermarket)

Method

  • Get your cake of choice baked and cooled
  • Make some classic American buttercream (or try this recipe if you’re being fancy: https://the-soggy-bottom.com/2020/01/31/italian-meringue-buttercream/ )
  • fill between the layers of your cooled cakes, and crumb coat (put a thin layer of icing around the whole outside of your cake)
  • Chill in the fridge!!! This step is really important if you want a clean looking cake (need at least 30 mins I would say)
  • Get a decent blob of buttercream (but save some for the chicks) and spread over your chilled crumb coated cake, it doesn’t really need to be super neat because we’re going to cover it all up anyway so just whack it on!
  • Pop that back in the fridge to firm up
  • In the mean time start prepping your decor
  • Colour most of your remaining buttercream yellow
  • Plop into a piping bag (or freezer bag)
  • If you do the next step on greaseproof paper or tin foil it will make it easier:
  • Snip off the end and pipe a big blob, then a smaller blob on top to make your chicks
  • Freeze these for 5 mins – you’ll then be able to pick them up and handle them much easier
  • Colour tiny amounts of buttercream black and orange, and use a cocktail stick to place these on the chick to form eyes and beak
  • TOP TIP – if you want to make this step easier, buying the gel icing pens from supermarkets are really useful for small details like this
  • Get your cake back out the fridge and chuck some mini eggs on
  • Cut out a small circle from paper and place on the cake
  • Fill the surround with sprinkles and push them in a bit so they don’t all fall off
  • Peel off your paper, and place your chickies in the centre
  • All done!!

Right well that’s the end of that.

I hope you all have a fabuloso Easter.

Thanks for reading, lots of luv, Han x

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Posted in Cakes, decoration

Covid Christmas Cake

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

Nobody under the age of 65 actually likes Christmas cake, but it’s a tradition in our house to rustle one up every year. This was last year’s crimbo cake – a cheeky little covid reindeer 😉 At the time I thought this would make a fun ironic post for this year, but as I’m sat in iso in my oodie and a Santa hat, the joke is well and truly on me 😦

Sad but still cute x

Kitchen goss

The real tragedy of the story is that I’ll have to wait to get my paws on the Christmas treats cupboard. Normally I’m plumping up nicely for at least a week and a half before the big day. Honestly never craved a chipolata so much in my entire life.

If ANYONE at home opens the choccie wreath without me I’m actually exiting the family. You have been warned.

Also bit of a side note but we went to Lapland when I was a kid to see our big man Mr Christmas and I swear we drank reindeer milk. I have been telling people this story and they look at me like I’m really weird so please can someone from my family confirm if I’ve drank reindeer milk or if I’m a big fat liar please. Xoxo

Anyway back to biz – if you want to find out how you can make your own limited edition omicron Rudolph, keep watching…

I don’t know what this jazzy crimbo backing song is but kind of love it

If you can’t stand to watch the vid with iMovie’s version of sleigh ride playing, then here are some written instructions

If you would like to rustle up your own cake to go with the reindeer, here’s my blog recipe from 2 years ago now – wowee I’m an actual oldie https://the-soggy-bottom.com/2019/12/16/christmas-cake/

Ingredients/equipment

  • Fondant icing – I would just get 1 pack of white and colour a big blob brown, and smaller blobs black, red, light brown, blue and white
  • Food colouring if colouring your own
  • Toothpicks
  • Water/edible glue – you could use super glue but I wouldn’t recommend health wise x

Method

  • Make a big brown pointy blob
  • Stick a tooth pick in it and leave a bit of it poking out to hold the head later
  • Roll out a brown sosig
  • Chop in two
  • Make it look like a hoof and glue that on with your water
  • Before you do the arms make a little light brown oval for the belly
  • Repeat the sosig thing for the arms
  • Make another brown blob and use your finger to make a horizontal indentation which will form like the transition between nose and eyes
  • Red blob for nose (unless you want to make an ordinary reindeer)
  • White blobs squished for eyes, put black blobs on for the pupils
  • TOP TIP – to make the eyes look more realistic/cute put a tiny blob of white in the corner of the pupil
  • To make the antlers shove a stick of black fondant onto a cocktail stick and form little branches off the top
  • To make the mask roll out a bit of blue fondant, make little lines on it with the cocktail stick, then glue this on the face – make sure you CoVeR tHE NosE anD MouTH
  • Shove it all together
  • Bish bash bosh

Okay and that’s the end of it. I know I’ve not posted in a while, I’m an incredibly busy and popular person I simply cannot keep up x

Hope you all have a very merry crimbo (hopefully covid free).

Wash your hands, wear a mask, get your vaccine cya x x x

Posted in Cakes, decoration

Honey celebration cake

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

Being from manny (well not really but I say I am when I’m on holiday) we love a good bee. So for my mum’s big bday bash I thought there’d be nothing better than a bee themed honey cake!

Layers of honey cake, with honey cream cheese buttercream AND a honey butterscotch drip all topped off with lots of bee goodies. I may have gone overboard but I feel like too much is never enough – am I right or am I right?

Anyway on to the kitchen goss…

Kitchen goss

I used to be a sick sledger back in the day, so at the start of the year I took the plunge and joined snowboarding society. In hindsight signing up for the January trip may have been a little optimistic, but COVID trashed those plans anyway (but probs saved me from a trip to mountain rescue.)

Didn’t get there, but did get a tshirt so who’s the real winner? Gonna start trotting around uni repping this so everyone knows I’m cool and sporty.

Cba just want to live my best chalet girl life and find a hunk to shred it on the snow with me (any semi good looking snowboarders send your applications in pls and thanks x)

#OOTD

Okay back to the cake, it’s a long one so get comfortable my loves…

Okay I’m not taking creds for this recipe, it comes from the wonderful “The Cake Blog” – check out their website here! https://thecakeblog.com/2015/07/honey-butter-cake.html#respond

Ingredients

  • FOR THE CAKE BOARD
  • 1 cake board (bigger than the size of cake)
  • Fondant icing
  • Yellow food colouring
  • Gold luster dust
  • Hexagon cookie cutters
  • FOR THE HONEY SPONGE
  • 500g plain flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 280ml buttermilk
  • 130g honey
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 225g unsalted butter (or salted if you want, go wild luv)
  • 315g caster sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • FOR THE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
  • 225g cream cheese
  • 340g unsalted butter
  • 80g honey
  • 600g icing sugar (more if it needs thickening)
  • FOR THE GLAZE
  • 65g caster sugar
  • 75g honey
  • 120ml double cream
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • FOR THE DECOR
  • Fondant
  • Pearl/gold luster dusts
  • Yellow and black food colouring
  • Wire
  • White choccie
  • Bubble wrap

Method

  • Right I’m gonna try and make this short because nobody wants to read a hefter recipe
  • CAKE BOARD
  • Roll out your fondant
  • Brush some water on to the cake board
  • Lay fondant over and cut off excess round the sides
  • Decorate with the hexagons and use a brush with gold luster dust to emphasise the hexagon boarders
  • HONEY SPONGE
  • Preheat the oven to 180C
  • mix the flour and baking powder in a bowl
  • In another bowl mix the buttermilk, honey and vanilla
  • In a 3rd bowl (lot of washing up I KNOW) beat your butter and sugar until pale and fluffy
  • Add the eggs one at a time
  • Gradually add wet and dry ingredients, starting and ending with the dry
  • Mix until combined
  • Grease some cake tins of your choice
  • Plop in your batter
  • Bake for 30mins ish or until they look golden and a toothpick comes out clean (crumbs are fine, wet batter is not)
  • let those bad bois cool
  • HONEY FROSTING
  • beat butter and cream cheese
  • Add icing sugar
  • Add honey
  • Beat until it looks like icing
  • HONEY GLAZE
  • Whack sugar and honey in a pan
  • Heat and stir until sugar has dissolved
  • Continue to cook without stirring (you can swirl the pan) until it turns golden brown
  • Remove from heat and stir in cream
  • Add butter and stir
  • Let cool completely
  • DECOR
  • FONDANT BEES:
  • Blob of yellow fondant
  • Lay on stripes of black fondant (gluing on with water)
  • Make eyes out of white and black blobs
  • Cut heart shapes out of paper and push them into the back of each bee to make wings
  • Curl wire by wrapping round a pencil, then stick one end in each bee (you can round each end to make them more secure inside each bee)
  • Leave to dry
  • CHOCCIE HONEYCOMB:
  • melt some white choccie
  • Smooth over bubble wrap (make sure you’re using the bubble side otherwise you won’t get the indentations!)
  • Make sure you put a thick layer on otherwise it’ll just break (I like to do it thick enough so you can’t see the bubble wrap underneath the choccie)
  • Leave to set
  • Then break into pieces
  • Brush with luster dust for extra pazazz
  • FONDANT HEXAGONS
  • roll out different shades of yellow fondant
  • Cut out with hexagon cutter (I used the same size for this)
  • Brush with luster if you wanna
  • ASSEMBLY
  • cake with frosting in between layers
  • Leave this to set in the fridge before you try and ice the outside
  • Then plop frosting on the outside and smooth
  • Again SET
  • Add glaze
  • Set
  • Put on cake board
  • Add all your extras
  • Reward yourself for all your hard work with a massive slice x

Wowee ok that was so long, well done if you’ve made it to the end of that

Right I’m exhausted after all that so I’m gonna head off.

Luvs ya, bye x

Posted in Cakes, decoration

Tropical Traybake

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

Since nobody has been able to jet off to Benidorm or any other exotic location this year, it’s time to bring the sun to us with this tropical traybake.

This orange and passionfruit cake will provide the sunny vibes, but if you really want to recreate the ‘Brit on holiday’ experience, then you’ll also need to do the following:

  • wear a ridiculous tropical shirt (bonus points if it matches with the rest of your travel companions)
  • get up at the crack of dawn to ‘save the sunbeds’
  • burn to a crisp on the first day
  • say it’s boiling at least 17 times a day
  • learn how to say hello in the local language, then proceed to speak English

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the recipe, here is this week’s (very embarrassing) kitchen goss

Kitchen Goss

I can’t quite believe I’m exposing myself this much on KG, but this is too funny not to share.

So I recently rediscovered this voice memo I made in 2018 when I was revising for my chemistry A-level. I must’ve seen a pinterest thing on creative ways to revise or something, because something unholy possessed me to make a song about electrophilic addition.

Yes it’s to the tune of ‘These Words’ by Natasha Bedingfield

Yes it took me all day to write (and I couldn’t even make it rhyme)

Yes the full version of ‘Mechanisms Mix *flame*’ is available on soundcloud

I can’t bring myself to listen to the full thing, and safe to say I will never be doing that again.

Back to the bake…

Ingredients

  • FOR THE CAKE
  • 225g butter
  • 225g caster sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 225g self raising flour
  • 1 orange – zested n juiced
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • FOR THE ICING
  • 150g butter
  • 300g icing sugar
  • 3tbsp passionfruit curd (or adjust to your taste)
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • gel food colourings

Method

  • whack your butter and shug in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy
  • add eggos one at a time
  • fold in flour, orange zest, vanilla and 3/4 of your orange juice (save the remaining quarter for icing time)
  • Whack this in whichever tray tickles your pickle, make sure to grease and line it
  • bake for 20-25 mins at 180C (or if your oven doesn’t have numbers on it like mine, then just take it out when it looks golden and a knife comes out clean when you poke it in)
  • Whilst that’s cooling you can crack on with the icing
  • whip up the butter and icing sugar
  • add the orange juice and passionfruit curd to your taste (it can be quite zingy)
  • if you want to decorate with painted buttercream flowers then split icing into bowls and add colourings of your choice (gel food colourings work best here)
  • once the cake is cool, remove from the tin and spread over a base layer of icing
  • Let this set up in the fridge – very important step otherwise going to be difficult to add more buttercream on top!
  • once harder to the touch, get the cake out and get creative
  • I ‘painted’ flowers onto mine, which is a technique I’ve been wanting to try out for ages, but go with whatever you feel looks fun n fresh

If you’re interested in how I decorated my traybake, then take a look at this very speedy vid below.

Thanks for reading, lots of luv, Han – KG x x x

Posted in decoration

Isomalt Splash

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

After my last post (https://bitchesthatbake.home.blog/2020/09/11/lemon-celebration-cake/) I received thousands of messages begging me to put up a tutorial on how to make the isomalt splash which decorated the top. I’m just giving the fans what they want x

Isomalt is a sugar alcohol (not the kind you can get sloshed on though 😦 ) and when it cools it sets like hard candy – perfect for sugar art. It can be blown into little bubbles, made into delicate flowers, or in this case, slopped around to make a splash.

Before we begin, here’s the KG.

Kitchen Goss

The one accessory which should feature in every fashionista’s wardrobe: Primark’s Disney dog outfit range.

If you have a below average sized head and want to stand out from the crowd, then the small dog costumes will be right up your street. Slip into one of these and everyone will want to PET THAT DAWG.

Of course the stitch costume was whipped out after an incredibly *classy* bottomless brunch with my sistaz. The real question is though, who wore it better – me, Melis or the rat (Gregg)????

It’s the snorting for me x

Anyway, moving on. I’ve made a cheeky vid for you all instead of just a written recipe – keepin up with the tech for kids these days. Pls enjoy.

Ingredients

  • isomalt (ready tempered, clear, just get on amazon)
  • gel food colouring
  • silicone mat (this is needed)
  • bottle of some kind

Method

  • Pop a few isomalt balls in a heatproof bowl
  • chuck in the microwave and blast in 30second intervals until bubbling
  • be really careful because it is literal molten sugar and can say from experience it hurts if you touch it
  • add in any colouring you want at this point
  • you might have to blast in the microwave again to get really hot (it sets up super quick so you have to move fast)
  • pour your bubbling isomalt onto your silicone mat
  • start to tip the mat to spread it around
  • when the isomalt has cooled slightly on the mat (30 secs) lay the mat over a bottle and hold in the desired shape
  • wait a couple of minutes until the isomalt has set hard
  • carefully remove the bottle and peel off the silicone mat – take your time you don’t want to crack your masterpiece
  • and that’s it!!! Pop it on top of your cake, sit back n chillax

And that’s everything my lovelies. Posts may be on the slow side for a while because my oven at uni is a genuine candle but I’ll see what I can rustle up.

Thanks for reading

Much love, Han, BTB x x x x x x

Posted in decoration

Italian Meringue Buttercream

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

Not overly sweet and smoother than my chat up lines – you won’t go back to the basic buttercream after getting your nashers round this.

There are 3 main types of buttercream – American, Italian meringue and Swiss meringue. There are some other irrelevant ones but these are the 3 top dawgs.

Continue reading “Italian Meringue Buttercream” →
Posted in decoration

How to hand-paint a cake

Posted on by The Soggy Bottom

I like to think of cake as a blank canvas (but it’s so much better than an actual canvas because you can eat it afterwards).

There are so many techniques out there for decorating cakes, from sculpting fondant to mirror glazing. Hand painting is one that is not seen as often, but can result in a cake that’s (almost) as beautiful as you 😉 x

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