Happy Mother's Day Grandma Kiwicakes

Happy Mother’s Day to Grandma Kiwicakes. 

Our family has been lucky enough to have Grandma Kiwicakes in our bubble since level 4 lockdown. 

Like all mums she’s always been there for me. But you guys are lucky to have her too. As she helped me get Kiwicakes off the ground, and put hundreds (who am I kidding thousands) of unpaid hours in to get us where we are today. 

This Battenberg cake is her favourite- but lucky us. We get to help her eat it tonight

Marzipan cookies

Granda Kiwicakes recently made this incredibly tasty shortbread. I'm a huge fan of marzipan, so I eagerly scoffed mine.

Ingredients

250g flour

150g unsalted butter, at room temp.

100g marzipan

50g sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg yolk

pinch of salt

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180C. Line baking sheets baking paper

Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix until evenly combined.

Cover dough and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Divide dough into 14 equally sized parts (golf ball sized).

Roll in little balls and flatten them.

Push the stamper or mould onto the flattened dough ball.

Place the dough cookies on the baking sheet. Chill 5mins

Bake for about 12 - 15 minutes or until lightly browned

Cool on wire rack. 

Pina Colada Mousse cake for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday

Last week was Grandma Kiwicakes' birthday. She asked for a birthday cake with tapa and pineapple. However at the time she didn't know I'd planned to make her a pina colada mousse cake using a recipe I purchased online in support of the Helping Sweet Kate charity drive. The recipe is from the lovely Jo at Ciccio cakes. A mousse cake doesn't really lend it self to decorating in the usual manner. I didn't let that stop me and set out to give Grandma Kiwicakes what she asked for. This cake was a whopping 12'' in diameter.

Layered with 2 layers of pina colada mousse and another thin layer on top. The pineapple decorations were marzipan and the tapa design was pastel yellow Satin Ice fondant

To make the pineapples I coloured some marzipan yellow and green using progel

Using a pineapple plunger cutter, I cut out lots of little pineapples, the design was a bit one dimensional, so I added green tufts to the top of each one.

Using a fondant cutting wheel, I sliced randomly from the outside edge, as I wanted the ragged edges left on my tufts.

The marzipan sticks to itself when pressed, so no edible glue is needed. These are so quick and easy to make. In less than 20 minutes, I had enough for the whole cake.

The tapa design was made using this mould. I made two strips to go around the circumference of the cake. It is over dusted with lustre in a coppery tone. The pineappples rest on the ledge of the tapa surround. The Kiwicakes girls declared the cake delicious and this huge cake was spread around many people, each with a piece to take home. It was fun to do something a little different for a change.

Note: Mousse cakes needs to be refrigerated, so ideally this should be decorated shortly before serving.