Malteasers cake

My husband´s birthday was looming and I was searching for a cake that I could make him as he´s not keen on fondant or buttercream (I didn´t realise at first that this cake also has buttercream!!) so I usually make him a chocolate cake.Not really an easy feat to decorate as his birthday falls in July and it´s so hot that everything melts!! I had been wanting to make this cake ever since I first saw it on a fellow blogger´s blog, Baking Cakes Galore, so now was the perfect excuse.I want to dedicate this recipe to Rosie from Baking Cakes Galore as she was very inspiring and also very encouraging in the early days of this blog.

I cannot take the credit for this recipe because as mentioned,I saw the recipe on Baking Cakes Galore and pretty much followed it to the letter.Two things to note when making this recipe, I´d never realized before how difficult it is to find and buy Malteasers where I live. My husband had to buy me two packets from a vending machine at the university because I couldn´t find them in any of the shops. Plus he could only get white whereas I had wanted to alternate white and milk chocolate Malteasers on top. Also, because it has been so hot lately I was worried about the Malteasers and the buttercream melting so put the cake in the fridge, which probably dried it out a little!On the whole though this cake was delicious and I shall be making it again in the future!

As I said, I hardly changed anything in the recipe although I couldn´t really taste the Horlicks in the cake itself so next time I might add extra Horlicks. Horlicks is a malted milk drink sold in the UK but Ovaltine is also very similar...unfortunately I don´t think there is a similar alternative in Spain! I´d be grateful to any Spanish readers to let me know if there is something similar. You can probably buy it online or in British food shops in Madrid or Barcelona or along the coast!!The recipe also states two 37g bags of Malteasers, I only used one of the bags as often I tend to think that less is more!

Peppa Pig cake & some recent bakes

 
I have been on a mad baking roll recently and I haven´t had time to blog about them,particularly as time is very restricted these days. It was my daughter´s second birthday not long ago and as she is obssessed with Peppa Pig,I decided to make her a Peppa Pig cake,using the buttercream transfer technique I learned on my buttercream course with Fabricando Delicias.I hadn´t practiced or used this technique since and as it was about two or three years ago my memory of how to do it was a little bit rusty, so I had to refresh it by watching some great tutorials I found on YouTube.

I made the cake the day before her "party" and then set to decorating it the day of the party,covering it with fondant, mixing the buttercream and the colours etc.I had a couple of issues covering the cake with the fondant,due to the fondant cracking and tearing.I think this was mainly due to it being a pretty thick cake! I then set to on doing the Peppa Pig figure and piping it all in with a star tip nozzle. All in all,the decorating part took me ages, all morning practically but I was very pleased with the result, even though it wasn´t completely perfect.The worst thing was we had to cancel the party as my daughter had a fever and wasn´t very well and then I started feeling ill later that night so hardly anyone got to see all my hard work before it got cut into!!!

Here are some other recent bakes that I´ve made and am very proud of.
My first red velvet cupcakes with fondant butterflies, a hot milk sponge  cake for my friend´s daughter´s 1st birthday and white chocolate cupcakes with buttercream and embossed fondant hearts.
Hopefully, you can see that I am learning lots of new techniques and improving my cake decorating skills and I´ll try and share these as and when I have the time.