Wednesday 14 March 2012

NOM NOM NOM

THE '80s CALLED. THEY WANT THEIR CAKES BACK.

Who wouldn't want to make PacMan cakes? Probably someone who doesn't want to spend the afternoon rolling colour into icing. If this is you, look away now.



...Still here?

Good! Then let's get on with it.

The fairy cake recipe itself is just a simple one courtesy of Mary Berry. Use your own if your prefer. Add flavourings. Sprinkling in sultanas. Whatever floats your bun-related boat.The idea for the PacMan icing came from a 'Cakes for Geeks' blog. Google it to see the original, and slightly better, version. They didn't include a recipe. Bastards.

Ingredients:

For the cake-

100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 large free range eggs (it doesn't work with caged hen eggs. The cakes will spontaneously combust)
100g self-raising flour
1 level tsp baking powder



For the icing-

Ready-to-roll icing, white. Food colourings of every kind. Well, black, green, blue, yellow, red, purple at least. Or combo different colours to make new ones. Like primary school but fun!

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees celcius. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and BEAT THEM TO DEATH. Just kidding. Beat them a regular amount. Fill up some cupcake cases with the mixture, about two thirds full, and bake for 15-20 minutes. Wow! Simples ay?

While they are cooling comes the real labour. You will need to cut off a large chunk of icing and spread a little of the black colouring onto it using a toothpick or similar. Next massage the colour into the icing. This will take some time to get a good rich black. Repeat this process with different colours (most will only need a small amount of icing) until you have all the coloured icing you require. Roll out the icing pin with a rolling pin as required.

I used a cookie cutter to cut the black discs for the background, that was the easy bit. Use a little icing sugar mixed with water to glue the icing discs in place. I purchased an arts scalpel from a stationers for less than £1 and used this to cut out most of the shapes you can see. The cherries, coins and PacMan are cut using various size bottle tops, adapted with the scalpel. The blue maze was made by rolling the icing in my palm to make a snake shape which I then pressed flat and cut and bent to shape.

Do not be fooled, this is a labour intensive icing project but it is NOT, I repeat NOT, difficult. It just takes time. Be patient, not every shape will come out right first time. Remember to stick them on using runny icing as they have a tendency to drop off.



If you have any questions, drop me a line. It's kinda hard to explain how exactly to do each shape. It's intuition as I made it up as I went along. You'll be FINE. Mail me pics if you try it, I'd love to see other 80s cakes!

Hope you get the high score,
A x

2 comments:

Dawniepants said...

Looks amazing!

dp
x
www.inanityandthegirl.com

Aisling said...

Thanks Dawn! Give them a go? xx

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