COOKING COMPANION


Birthday Cake Masterclass


To celebrate FOODLOVER’s birthday issue, the team at ANNA Cake Couture in Bristol have given us some top tips for creating the most gorgeous birthday cake we’ve ever seen!


WE LOVE CAKE!


For us a love of baking came from our desire to eat something delicious – it's about dealing with all the burnt edges and wasted ingredients that come with tweaking recipes, so it’s very important to sit down at the end with a cup of tea and a large slice of cake.


It's about discovering new ways to achieve flavours and certain textures, creating something new and exciting or just perfecting the most delicious chocolate ganache to sandwich between your favourite sponge to finally end up with a cake that tastes as good it looks, if not even better.


So be patient, enjoy and embrace all the errors that you've made previously to come out with the most delicious baked goods you've dreamed of, especially when it's still warm from the oven.


LEMON & RASPBERRY BIRTHDAY CAKE


150g butter, softened 150g caster sugar 3 eggs


150g self-raising flour Zest of 1 lemon Squeeze of lemon juice Handful of raspberries Sunflower oil for greasing


FOR THE JAM: 50g caster sugar 50g raspberries


LEMON BUTTERCREAM: 300g butter 450g icing sugar


1 tbsp lemon curd (or more if you like it zingy!)


1 To start with, preheat oven to 160C and line your cake tins with greaseproof paper – a little sunflower oil will help the greaseproof stick to the sides of tins.


2 Cream together the soft butter with the caster sugar using a paddle until pale and fluffy. If


you don't have a stand mixer, you can use an electric whisk – making sure your butter is at room temperature or a little warmer will allow the eggs to be more easily incorporated in the next step.


3 Add the 3 room temperature eggs into the butter and sugar one at a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one.


4 Then sieve the self-raising flour into your batter and start to mix on a very slow setting – otherwise you will have a flour explosion!


5 Carefully and slowly mix in the zest of 1 lemon to the batter.


6 Divide your cake batter mixture between two 5" tins and spread out evenly to the sides, sprinkle around 6 raspberries over the top of each tin and push them into the batter with the end of a spoon so they end up sitting in the middle of the sponge.


7 Pop into your preheated oven for 30 mins.


8 To check whether the cake is done, poke it in the centre with a skewer. If the skewer comes out clean your cake is baked! Another tip to tell if its baked is to gentle push down on the centre of the sponge with your (clean) fingers, the sponge should spring back when ready. If it doesn’t spring back, give it another couple of minutes in the oven.


9 Once baked (carefully) tip your cakes out onto a wire rack to cool, but don’t turn your oven off just yet!


10 Whilst your cakes are cooling you can make the first bit of your filling – the jam.


11 This is our super easy jam that will transform your birthday cake to the next level! Place the raspberries with a squeeze of lemon juice into a shallow baking tin and in a separate baking tin pour the sugar,


38 | THE WEST COUNTRY FOODLOVER


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