Baking // Pizza Birthday Cake

Now I know Mondays are when I usually post my Great British Bake Off posts but this week  Idecided not to bake along with the theme of Pastry at all. Last year I made two bakes involving choux pastry (Profiteroles and Goats cheese, caramelised onion, walnut and rocket choux bun canapés) and I also made empanadas a couple of weeks ago, so I figured I’d already tried a few of the bakes from this week’s theme. I’ve also been mega busy as it was also my boyfriends birthday this weekend. As I wrote in yesterday’s InstaLIFE post, I made him a birthday cake decorated to look like a pizza! I thought I’d give you all a looksie at how I did it (it’s super easy!!!) in place of my usual GBBO baking post.

INGREDIENTS:

For the cake base…

** 3 eggs

** 6 oz self raising flour

** 6 oz salted butter

** 6 oz caster sugar
** 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

For the toppings…

** icing sugar
** salted butter
** dash of milk
** white chocolate
** 3 Ferrero Roche
** yellow Peanut M&Ms
** black jelly beans
** Dolly Mixtures
** Haribo Rainbow Spaghetti
** Haribo Giant Strawbs

INSTRUCTIONS:

For the “pizza base”…

1 ) Cream the butter and sugar together until it resembles a light almost mousse like consistency.

2) Crack all the eggs into a cup and whisk together with a fork.

3) Add some of the flour into the butter and sugar mix, as well as some of the egg. I usually just tip a bit of each at a time. Mix it all together.

4) Keep adding the eggs and flour into the main sugar / butter bowl in manageable amounts until all the ingredients are incorporated and mixed in, and have a smooth consistency.

5) Add in the vanilla essence and mix in until distributed evenly through the mix. Add more if you think it needs it.

6) Line a 12″ pizza tray with baking parchment so the batter doesn’t seep through the holes and then pour in the mixture. Use a pallet knife to evenly distribute it, and make sure it’s filled right to the edges, and doesn’t go above the shallow pan rim.

7) Bake for 15 – 20 mins on Gas Mark 6 / 200c. Keep an eye on it as due to the thiness of the cake it could bake quickly. When it’s golden brown and cooked through, take it out to cool on a wire rack.

Time to make the “tomato sauce”…

8) Put a block of butter into a bowl of sifted (sieved?!) icing sugar (I don’t know exact measurements I’m afraid, I always guestimate and make my butter icing to taste).

9) Cream these together. If the icing sugar doesn’t catch onto the butter and the mix remains very powdery, then add a dash of milk. This will help bring the sugar and butter together, but you may need to add more icing sugar to soak up the milk.

10) Keep tasting your mixture, you’ll be able to tell if it tastes too buttery or sugary. You can also gauge how much you’ll need to cover your cake, remember you want to keep a rim of cake around the outside to look like the crust.

11) Once you’re happy with the amount and taste of your butter icing, slowly add in red food colouring until you have a good tomato red colour. I used an entire tube of red gel colouring and it was still more salmon pink so added half a bottle of liquid red colouring too. I still didn’t get it quite as red as I would have liked but it started to get that artificial food colouring taste so decided to stick with the dark pink / light red colour I had.

12) Once your sponge has completely cooled, spread the butter icing on top. Make it a good even layer, leaving a bare patch around the rim so it looks like a crust.

Now lets add the toppings...

13) Once your icing has set a little bit, finely grate white chocolate over the top to be the cheese.

14) Cut 3 Ferrero Roche chocolates in half and dot them on top of the pizza.

15) Use scissors to cut a handful of Haribo Giant Strawbs into circle shapes, removing the green “stalks”. Place these on top of the pizza too.

16) Add some yellow Peanut M & Ms “sweetcorn”, black jelly bean “olives”, Dolly Mixtures “mushrooms” and red, green and yellow Haribo Rainbow Spaghetti “peppers”. Ta daaaa pizza is finished!

I served mine in a take away pizza box to make it look even more pizza-like (it was a brand new clean box obvs, otherwise that would have been a little bit grim!) Tony’s favourite pizza is a Quattro Stagioni, so I very wittily added a label saying Quattro Stagitony ho ho ho!! as well as some classic Toto photos and a big “Happy 30th Birthday” sign inside. We also used a pizza cutter to slice and serve it to add to the authentic pizza cake experience!

I was so pleased (and amazed!) with how my pizza cake turned out – it really does look quite like a pizza! It was so easy to make and quite quick too as the decoration is all just strategically placing pre-shaped sweets and treats on top! I pulled the cake together in just 10 minutes after the cake and icing was done (as I was rushing to get it done in time before my boyfriend came home – which is also why I don’t have better pictures soz!), so it’s a great cake to make if you’re short on time. Most importantly, Tony loved it, and it was a fun end to our pizza dinner. Minimum effort, maximum effect!

What do you think of my pizza cake?

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