Wedding anniversary cake

I was very honoured last week to be asked to provide the cakes for a 10th wedding anniversary party which was being held in a pub in Redditch in the West Midlands, not too far from where I live.
The order was for a large cake and then some smaller cakes for 40-50 guests at the party.

The only request was that the main cake was heart shaped and vanilla flavoured. It was lovely to be able to make suggestions and develop the idea together.

Taking the idea of a heart cake, I decided to do a three layer naked cake. Each layer was made from a Victoria Sponge all-in-one recipe (Mary Berry's -the only one I ever use!) with the addition of a little bit of vanilla extract. The 8" recipe fitted the tin beautifully and was just right for 3 layers without the cake being TOO tall! The filling was homemade strawberry and prosecco jam and vanilla buttercream. I had read an incredibly useful blog from @BecksBake on Twitter; this guided me through the cake construction with some great tips such as using a thin piping nozzle to fill in the gaps between the layers to get a smoother final outer layer of buttercream. The blog can be found here. If ever you are making a naked cake, I can thoroughly recommend you read it.

The finished cake was topped with fresh berries and I was delighted with the outcome...and so was the customer!

The smaller cake collection was made up of mini lemon drizzle loaves, hazelnut and frangelico brownies and my raspberry frangipane bites.

This was a wonderful opportunity I was delighted to be able to help out with. I hope its the first of many commissions of this type. If you're local to Birmingham and looking for some bakes, please get in touch!