I don't know about you, but when I think of going to the British seaside I think of Mr Whippy ice creams. With a flake and some strawberry sauce of course. The National Trust are celebrating the South West Coast at the moment with a Coastal Festival, and seen as they look after over 300 miles of it, there's a lot of fun to be had! They're arranging everything from beach clean ups, water sport events, walks, runs, picnics and plays.
They've even made the epic cake above to commemorate their celebrations, and have asked bloggers to make cakes too, with the theme 'I love the coast'. My cake is all about my childhood memories of going to the seaside, playing in the sand and eating ice cream.
My cake was three layers high and I baked each layer seperately. I started by greasing and lining my tins.
I then creamed together 350g butter and 350g caster sugar.
I added in 6 eggs, bit by bit, and 3 tsp vanilla extract, and whisked well.
Finally I folded in 350g self raising flour and 2 tsp baking powder. and divided the mixture between the three tins. I even went as far as to measure the mixture to make sure it was divided evenly! I have a lot of problems with my cakes getting domed tops and I read some tips about making a hole in the middle of the mixture to stop this, so I thought I'd give it a try.
The second part of the anti-dome tip was to place a circle of greasproof paper over the top with a hole in the middle. I baked the cakes on 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3 for 30 minutes.
Well the tips worked! My cakes came out perfectly flat on top. I am going to definitely use these tips next time. I left the cakes to cool.
For the 'ice creams' on top of the cake I purchased some cup cones, the ones with flat bottoms.
I wrapped them in foil and placed them into a muffin tin.
I made a cake batter using the same method as the bigger cake, except I used 56g butter, sugar and self raising flour, 1 egg and 1/4 tsp vanilla extract.
I baked them on 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3 for 25 minute. I removed the foil and left them to cool.
For the icing I mixed together 160g icing sugar with 80g butter and 1/4 tsp vanilla extract. I piped it onto the cones just like a Mr Whippy, and then pushed in a chocolate flake.
I made the blue sea icing by mixing together 400g icing sugar, 200g butter, a drop of Sugarflair Ice Blue food colouring and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
I crushed up 5 digestive biscuits for the sand.
I layered up the cake using strawberry jam to sandwich them together. I used a whole jar of jam.
I iced the cake all over with the blue buttercream, then I put 2 cocktail sticks into the bottom of each ice cream cake and stuck them into the cake. This gave them stability as the flake made their weight uneven. I then piled the biscuit sand all around the cones and all over the top of the cake.
The final flourishes were shell chocolates around the edge of the cake and some strawberry sauce on the ice creams. I was so pleased with the final result! It was like the seaside had come to my house.
It was delicious inside too, I think the simple flavours of vanilla and strawberry jam were just right for the indulgence of the decoration. My boyfriend loved the ice cream cone cupcakes, and I thought they were really tasty too. I'll absolutely be making a bigger batch of them another time.
