Anyone for cake?

Well it turns out I have an opportunity to bake for a local cafe, with a carte blanche,"make what you want,  I want your cakes". Ok. My cakes are nice, but come on! I mean I used to bake a lot, but mainly cupcakes and loafs and stuff at Christmas, but this is the real deal, big, sumptuous, gloriously flavoured layer cakes. I don't do big yummy cakes with finesse, but it seems too good an opportunity to turn down I reckon. So lilac swizzler the baker emerges, from an icing sugar dust cloud (imagine the music).

So, as well as frantically trying to still unpack boxes, find homes for stuff (how difficult is that!?!?) and renovate our house, I am now furiously reading cake books and flour bombing our kitchen trying out a variety of successful/unsuccessful cakes.  Monkeychops (@fellmonkey) is loving it, but judging  by a text earlier today" I just bust out of my trousers",  I don't think his waistband is. He is the official tester. I don't like eating my cakes, too critical. I also thought it would be cute to set up a wee cake table in our kitchen, always stocked with some home baking and an excuse to use one of my many cake stands, bad plan. Simon has seen it as a permanent feeding station for Breakfast, snacks, lunch, pre-dinner snacks, washing up snacks and any other excuse he can find. Anytime I talk to him from another room all I hear is a muffled "noo um nut eatin cakeeee". There is no disguising however, the sparkly glitter spread all round his mouth but. Chump.

So today was an attempt at making a lot of cakes at once, to see how I'll cope.  First off, they are all recipes I have never done before.

-A peanut Butter bundt cake
- Orange, lemon and poppy seed bundt cake
-Victoria sponge with rose jam and mascarpone
- A cappucino cake

I was also going to make scones and cupcakes, but having run out of baking powder within the first five minutes, an impromptu visit to the shop was needed. Some baking fairy thief then pinched my vanilla paste, which I spent 30 minutes trying to find, another impromptu visit to the shop, and a gas oven i cannot get the hang of for cooking cakes!

Success is not looking good today and neither is my patience. Peanut butter cake is cooling and awaiting decoration, poppy and lemon one in oven and the others in tins. I'm now overwhelmed by the mess and have decided to drink tea instead.

Either way I know what is for dinner, some form of cake mash up.

Watch this space....

*Post cake note. 

Well I made three out of the four cakes. Managed to drop the third Victoria sponge on the floor and burn my arm whilst trying to catch it, bashed my head on the oven when I stood up and splattered chocolate buttercream everywhere.  All in all I'd class it as a success, I mean I still have all my fingers.

Cakery Bakery 

Published by @lilacswizzle