It's been a quiet few weeks on the blogging front but I've finally made it to my holidays and as if by magic the sun has even started shining. Now I've got a bit more time on my hands I've got a little list of recipes to work through!!!
This Johnnie Walker whiskey bottle cake was first on the list. Made for a 36th birthday with the recipient obviously being a fan of this type of whiskey.
The production of the cake went fairly well. I started by cutting out a card template of a bottle, there are three layers of cake and the shape was cut out of a large cake slab. It's a lemon cake with lemon sugar syrup, lemon buttercream and lemon curd...it was nice and zingy!
The cake was covered in teddy bear brown sugarpaste and to give it a glassy finish, it is painted with confectioners glaze which gives it the shiny effect. The biggest problem with this cake was the pesky black board covering. If anyone has ever used black sugarpaste you'll know what I mean...you end up with black everywhere. Normally when I make cakes I cover the board around the cake once it's in place but I ended up getting black on my whiskey bottle and it wasn't behaving, so I had to resort to covering the board completely before placing the bottle on top. The only problem with this, was rough edges around the bottle, so unfortunately I had to add a ribbon around the bottle which normally wouldn't be there but it doesn't look too bad.
The bottle labels are great, they're printed with edible ink onto rice paper. They can easily be attached by brushing a little water on the back. Edible images are not cheap, about £10 per A4 sheet but they give a great finish and the effect is a lot easier than attempting to pipe the labels!! You can just make out that the label has a little bit of personalisation, the black label whiskey is normally 12 years aged but this special bottle was 36 years aged! The finishing touch was the message on the board which was made with Tappits which were then stuck on with a little edible glue.
Upon completion the cake was appreciated and the sun even shined on the birthday BBQ!
