When Dave and I lived in Bodrum in Turkey in the mid 80's our little flat didn't have an oven - there's a lot you can do with 2 hob rings and a grill but baking cakes definitely wasn't one of them. Nowadays thankfully Annie has a pretty standard oven in her house and she had already made three delicious, differently flavoured, cakes ready for me to ice and decorate.
Over the past couple of weeks in the UK I had made a selection of unwired flowers, petals and leaves which I packaged carefully to carry in my cabin hand baggage - I really didn't want them confiscated at the airport security checks. Annie, Esi and I had been sharing a few ideas about the design and I knew my turntable and trustee palette knife would be needed together with four cake boards, some wooden dowel rods, ribbon, posy picks and a couple of personalised wooden cake toppers. Cue some minimalist clothes packing to make space for the above!
Annie and I bought up all the available icing sugar in the local Turkish supermarkets. It seemed to be much grittier than its UK equivalent and the butter was much more .... umm .... buttery! Annie thankfully had a sturdy Kitchen Aid which made light work of knocking up a massive batch of butter icing.
The twelve layers were levelled and assembled into three cakes which were filled with flavoured butter cream before crumb coating and refrigerating. A thicker layer of butter cream was then applied and a horizontal ribbon effect achieved by holding the palette knife at an angle and turning each cake carefully on the turntable.
Annie decorated the bottom board with olive leaves from the trees in her garden and I positioned a few simple flowers, petals and leaves around the cake.
With the temperature in the high 20's the cake stayed inside in a cool room until after the main meal. It was a real honour to be asked to decorate the cake for Esi & Celal - what a lovely couple. Tebrik ederiz....
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| Jake getting in on the act! |
