A little bit of cake bakery

It's national bread week this week and Real Bread month is coming up in May, which means all things bread related have been getting lots of media coverage. There have been recipes in the Daily Mail, some great articles on the rise of artisan bread and the return of British millers in the Independent, and a one hour special on Scottish bakers on BBC Scotland's The Kitchen Cafe. All great news for Real Bread lovers and bakers everywhere.

Meanwhile, never one to miss a good marketing opportunity, I have been busy making cake! I like cakes. I like making them and eating them, but I'm not great at decorating them. I don't have the steady hand and nerves of steel required for it but once people know you can bake they tend to ask you to make things for them. Simple cakes like banana bread are my forte but I like to give more ambitious things a go from time to time with often amusing results.

This week I was commissioned to make a cake to celebrate a 10 year anniversary at work. I warmed up by making a massive pile of delicious gooey River Cottage chocolate and beetroot brownies to sustain me, then got to work.

My cake of choice was Edd Kimber's Bakewell homage; a three tiered almond sponge, with raspberry frosting which I pimped up with some icing and shiny hand painted stars. Now mine didn't look quite as beautiful as Edd's version on the BBC Food site, more like a slightly messy version of the Disney cake in Sleeping Beauty that I used to fantasise about as a child, but I was quite proud of myself none the less.

The downside to all these baking commissions are that you don't get to taste the finished result, so I've no idea if it was edible but judging by the amount of drink flowing in the room I
have a feeling the party goers may not have been that discerning by the time they got to cutting it! It was great fun to make and if a good time is had by all then I think that is all that a cake really should be.