The Horse Cake

What a week!

Amazing cake - wish I could
credit the baker but I have no idea
where the image came from and
I have really searched images
of horse cakes!

I still have only a shell as a kitchen, in no way an appropriate environment for making cupcakes let alone a celebration cake! However time was fast approaching for us to travel to Center Parcs, Woburn to celebrate Tony's 50th birthday and Grace, my best friends daughters 18th birthday.
In the heat of the New Year festivities I had promised Grace I would make her a cake that looked like a horse, I was still flush from the success of Lauren's Buckbeak cake and I had a kitchen! And when Grace sent through this image (right) as a reference for the sort of thing she would really appreciate,  the Prosecco  made me super confident!

When the building work started in April I got even more excited thinking how fantastic it would be creating my equine masterpiece in my beautiful, shiny new kitchen. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that!

September arrives and I have one very temperamental oven, a fridge and a table as a kitchen. Only one bare light bulb to work by and no fixed plug sockets, but these are important people in my life so kick up the bum time it was time to take action.

It didn't go to plan of course. While making the cakes for the horse my trusty hand mixer, one of the first things I bought on leaving home back  in 1987, suddenly gave up and I had to do a mad dash to buy a new one (which isn't half as good!). I made 3 beautiful squares of vanilla sponge with which to shape the horse's head, laced with chunks of milk, dark and white chocolate.

I inserted my skewer - it came out clean, I pressed the top and everything was firm however two of the cakes were not cooked in the middle. Luckily I still had enough cake to make the shape and get it in the freezer, although it was a bit more higgeldy piggeldy than I would have liked and I had to make some butter cream to keep it all together.

In total I used 18 eggs, which means I used roughly 2lbs each of butter, sugar and flour!

Building up the features with oddments of icing

Before icing I used a bit of regal ice to mark out the features of the face, the eyeball, nostril, mouth and cheek.

I'm pretty sure the example cake was glazed with a white chocolate ganache, but I ordered some milk chocolate fondant icing. a good decision in the end as it was about 25 degrees outside and the kitchen was roasting hot, I'm sure a ganache would only have added to the disasters.

I did exactly what I did for Buckbeak and iced the cake frozen, I had no issues last year, but this icing did not like it and went all molten and glossy, in the end I had to concede it was probably due to condensation as the cake defrosted and the panic started to set in.

All wasn't lost, it allowed me to smooth over any cracks that appeared on the corners of the icing and in not much time it dried fine to a nice finish. I used brushes and black food colouring to achieve the stippled, stubble around the horses mouth. If you try it, try and use powdered colouring as it doesn't give such a glossy effect, the liquid made a beautiful shiny eye, but could have done with the nostril being more matt.

I was at a bit of a loss about how to achieve the mane, I had bought some writing icing but that was too stringy, so in the end I melted some 72% Lindt chocolate and used a spoon to drizzle it over.

The end result wasn't too bad.

As usual I am in total awe of people who bake celebration cakes for a living. I coulldn't cope with the stress. Someone's big day depending on how you perform. I'm just a home baker, making it up as I go along!

If this bake had been the Show Stopper on the Great British Bake off I would have been voted off for sure.

My new cooker and extractor