Wednesday, March 17, 2010

shamrock cake

we are waiting for esme to get home from school so that we can start the party, decorate our tablecloth and eat the cake just before dinner - all worries about spoilt apetites thrown to the wind!


esme and elsie were very excited about going to school and nursery this morning in their flashing shamrock badges from their grandma and granddad. iris is sick and refused to be drawn into the girls' celebrations at first but has just woken up more in the mood for fun!



when elsie got home at lunchtime, we set about inventing a st.patrick's day cake. while i was working out whether to make a flag or a leprachaun, i spotted my four small heart tins that i got for christmas and realised we could make the perfect shamrock.

we creamed 50g butter and 100g caster sugar and then added an egg, a splash of vanilla extract and finally 100g self raising flour and a dash of cocoa powder. we spooned the mixture into the four tins and baked for 10 minutes at 180 degrees c.




the icing is 40g soft butter creamed together with 125g icing sugar and a dash of milk. colour it shamelessly green and eat it with a glass of red lemonade or a pint of guiness!

our girls looking unimpressed with aidan's cloak. . .

3 comments:

Argaf said...

Hummm - milk in icing eh, never made it that way - does it make it softer - or what sort of effect does it have on it ?

Anonymous said...

you could use water but i have always used milk in butter icing - it feels richer - i never mix milk and water for pancakes or yorkshire pudding batter either for the same reason! i then saw that the hummingbird bakery book uses milk in their traditional cupcake frosting.if anyone knows a more scientific reason why milk works well in icing, i'd be really interested...

emily at cocoabean said...

i think it makes a nice fudgier texture. the cake mum makes from her ancient bero book uses milk in the icing and that's always been a firm favourite. i think it works well for icing cakes where less fluff and more spread is an advantage.
nice badges girls! xxx