Golf and a 70th, how do you combine the two?

One of the school mums got in touch via the Facebook page to enquire about a cake for her father's 70th birthday.  He really enjoys playing golf and gardening, so whe wanted them included somehow.  And the grandchildren would be present to eat it, so the flavour was to be chocolate.  Fair enough, i said, and got my thinking cap on.  I Googled golf cakes and there were some stunning design ideas to be seen - there are some seriously talented cake makers out there in internet land!

I baked up my go to chocolate sponge recipe, and layered the two large cakes with lashings of luscious and thick green vanilla buttercream icing, to act as the background.  I knew I wanted grass on there too, as the customer had decided on an all buttercream cake.  I went to our wonderful local cake shop, The Cake Guru, and described the shade of green I had, and what else I had in mind.  I'm so pleased with Wendy's recommendation, as the grass tones in perfectly, don't you think?

As the cake flavour was chocolate, and the buttercream vanilla, I didn't feel that the usual strawberry jam filling would be suitable really.  I hadn't been warned of any allergies, so I slathered Nutella in btetween the layers - perfect choice with those flavours, don't you think?

Careful and prolonged use of the grass nozzle tip created the top layer and the decoration at the base edge, a little crushed biscuit for the sand bank and we were good to go.

I'm so pleased to say that the customer feedback was very positive - not only did they love how it looked, it was totally devoured on the day.  A very happy 70th birthday indeed.

Butterscotch is a manly flavour, right?

An ex-colleague of Mr Becca goes out with an ex-colleague of mine (from my pre-children days) - how's that for a coincidence??!  Anyway, she wanted to treat him to a birthday cake baked by my good self and after some discussion back and forth, we agreed on the same butterscotch cake that I made for Mr Becca's birthday this year.  The birthday boy is mad keen on boats, and even owns his own on which he sails whenever he gets the chance (kinda like Mr B and his motorbike) so the original plan was I'd attempt to outline a boat onto the top of the cake.  Then she got in touch to say, no, make it say 60 because after all, you're only 60 once.  So it does.

 

 

Even 70 year olds need cake

The brief was that her dad was turning 70, but they were only having a small family party, so didn't need a huge amount of food.  She wanted a cake, but didn't really know quite what she wanted.  We narrowed it down to vanilla sponge, raspberry jam and vanilla icing - a great start.  Then we fixed on colours - blue, white and silver were quite manly we felt.

Then I had the inspired idea of doing a burst cake, like I learnt at Cake School back in June (I haven't written about that, yet) and she loved that idea.  And a little 6" cutie would give them just the right amount of cake and the grandkids would love having a cake on grandpa's birthday.  The cake is filled and iced in blue buttercream, with sugarpaste covering.  So, what do you think?