baking mad Archives - Mummy & Moose

January is a bit of a busy month for us. In amongst the ever growing list of birthdays is my nephew Kieran’s. This year he turned 9 and as he is one of our favourite Humans we all wanted to make it memorable for him.

When I was asked to test out a Pirate Party Kit from Baking Mad I knew exactly who we should throw a party for!

Baking Mad sell a kit which provides you with almost everything you need to make an awesome Pirate Cake with a surprise chocolate bean centre.

Included in your kit you will find

Allinson Self Raising Flour (1kg)
Silver Spoon Icing Sugar (500g)
Billington’s Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar (500g)
Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract (60ml)
Black Icing Writing Pen
Pirate Cupcake Kit with Cupcake Cases + Toppers
Cake Decorating Sugar Paste Brilliant White 250g
Cake Decorating Sugar Paste Black 250g
Chocolate Beans 250g
Cake Board – 10”
Recipe and Instruction Booklet

The kit doesn’t come with butter and eggs. I would say that these are things you would probably have already but since you need 9 eggs in total, you will probably need to make that trip to the shops!

The recipe says you need 500g icing sugar but I didn’t have enough and ended up adding another box to my shopping list along with those 9 eggs and 3 packs of butter – I will concede that I did make my buttercream layers quite thick!

I am not a cake maker so this was a great experience but I did also need to buy equipment. Cake tins and a palette knife for smoothing – I accept that these are things which most people own though.

The kit arrived in a lovely lidded box tied with baking mad ribbon. I really felt that the ingredients and the decorations were of a great quality and really well presented.

Kieran happened to pay me a visit a couple of days before his birthday so I showed him the kit and he was really excited. He wanted to help me make the cake so I spent a lovely evening with him baking his birthday cake!

The instructions were easy to follow but I would have liked to have had a page of tips to help out clueless non bakers like me! Luckily I was able to call my Mum and she helped me out.

Tips from my Mum

To get the buttercream to lay with a nice flat finish use a hot palette knife. I use a jug of boiling water (drying the knife first of course)
Add milk if the icing is too thick
Cool the cake thoroughly before icing
Use a sharp knife to level the sides of the cake to give an even finish.

I was pretty happy with the finished result!

Kierans birthday was a great success! He and his friends all enjoyed the cake (especially when it was cut open to reveal the surprise chocolate inside!) and had lots of fun playing with the Baking Mad Pirate Hats (available to purchase on the Baking Mad website)

I found the process of using a party cake kit a really interesting one. Although I think the cost of the kit might limit how much I would use the service I think it is a great way to introduce yourself to creating a really special birthday cake.