Pink and Purple Girly Cake

One of my Young Women (at church) have a birthday this week, so she came over to my house and we made a cake for her together over the last couple of days.

She learned some new skills and we had a great time working together!

I love the silk-like finish of painting a cake with cluster dust!

This is how it looked before it got covered up with all the pink. I will definitely be using this technique again, so pretty.

Aimee LOVES pink, so we had to cram as much pink on the cake as we possibly could. I think we got the final cake pretty close to the design too.

The cake is chocolate (8" bottom, 6" top), filled with chocolate buttercream and coated with chocolate ganache before being covered in fondant and decorated.

Aimee aslo loves my Gingerbread Cookies, so she made a big batch, under my supervision, with a healthy helping of royal icing on top!

Didn't she do a great job on those cookies?

Gingerbread Cookies {recipe}

I bake trays and trays of gingerbread cookies through autumn and winter. These are perfectly spiced cookies with a good balance between crunchiness and chewiness. They make the perfect base for decorating with royal icing and are particularly good for both Halloween and Christmas cookies.

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Makes about 2 dozen cookies (depending on thickness and size of cutters)

Ingredients:

350g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 Tbsp ginger
1/2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
100g stork margarine / butter (room temp)
175g soft dark brown sugar
4 Tbsp golden syrup
1 large egg, beaten

Method:

Mix flour, bicarb, ginger, cinnamon and salt together in a bowl. Add marg/butter and rub it in with your fingers until it resembles crumbs. Add sugar, syrup and egg and mix well until a firm, evenly mixed dough forms. Don't over work. Form into ball and wrap in cling film. Leave in fridge over night if possible, otherwise for at least an hour.

Set oven to 180C

Roll dough out to about 1/4" (6mm) thick on top of a piece of floured greaseproof paper. Cut with cookie cutter and place on a baking tray that is either lightly greased or lined with greaseproof paper or a silpat mat. There should be at least 1/2" between cookies.

Bake for 9-12 minutes, until you can see the edges have become a nice golden brown. The darker you let them get, the more crunchy they will be, and less chewy.

Remove from baking tray and place on cooling racks as soon as they come out of the oven. Once they are cool, decorate as you please.

Here are some more Halloween cookies I have made:

Happy Halloween!