This cake turned out brilliantly well at every stage. It’s a stack of 3 x 6″ chocolate sponge cakes, sandwiched with fresh buttercream flavoured and coloured with raspberry compote or goo.
Standard sponge ingredients: 8oz flour, butter and sugar with 2oz cocoa powder and a little coffee with sour cream to lift it up.
I used cake strips round the edges of the tins to prevent caramelisation of the sides and help to level the cakes.
The buttercream is a rich vibrant berry pink flecked with tiny traces of raspberry skin. I crumb-coated and put the cake in the fridge overnight then covered it with plain buttercream all around this morning.
Remember the crystallised pear slices I made a few weeks ago? It was time to use them. They went all round the cake with a few beautifully curled pear slices on top. Really loved the colours.
I flicked some gold lustre dust and fine edible glitter over everything. Finally, I picked out a few highlights by hand painting some edible gold (Pixie Dust brand) paint here and there.
Finally, the picture. My second go at Dark Photography.
Mr Bee cut a side side off an old printer box, lined it with black foam board and pinned the construction together with T-pins, leaving a vertical gap to create a chink of light between boards on the open side. I placed a diffuser-covered light to the open sideand mounted my camera on a tripod facing and cake for a head on shot with a 50mm lens.
I like the shot. I love the vibrancy of the colour of the pear slices in the light and the otherwise dark, atmospheric nature generally.
Possibly a little too dark…. here it is slightly lightened up:
Slightly less dark still?
Want to see the cake in full light?
Three Bees in My Bonnet 