90. Baking for Mum's Birthday

Hello everyone, here's the first of my B posts (if you have no idea what I mean by B posts then read this) for March and it's a baking one because who doesn't love a bit of birthday cake?! It was my Mum's birthday this week and for the third consecutive year, I baked her birthday cake. I started baking my Mum's birthday cakes because:

• I love baking.
• I love my Mum.
• She loves my bakes.
• Our local bakery unfortunately closed down 3 years ago so I didn't really have much choice!
• The bakery didn't have a massive variety of birthday cakes for adults but with home baking, the possibilities are endless!

I've been looking through old posts and I actually published a post about my Mum's birthday cake last year exactly a year ago today! I didn't do a post for the one in 2013 but here is a photo (it's not the best photo sorry, there are some from my Mum's party but the lighting is a bit dodgy with the candles):

So from pink buttercream and a carrot cake with orange cream cheese frosting, what could I possibly do this year? Well, I bought my Mum some Lindor white chocolate truffles for Mother's Day and she finished the box in a couple of days so I knew I had to go with white chocolate this year! White chocolate is probably the most difficult to work with due to its high fat content and I have had a white chocolate ganache disaster a couple of years ago for an Eid cake so wanted a simple and foolproof recipe because I had to bake it after a 6 hour shift at work. I stumbled upon this little beauty on the BBC GoodFood website. I followed the recipe for the cake but added my own twist on the decorating to incorporate my Mum's love for pink. I used the pink piping icing from Asda which wasn't the easiest to work with and if I'm honest, I won't be repurchasing it as it just would not sit on the cake and kept being lifted up whenever I stopped piping. The Asda Daisy Swirls sugar flowers were a great finishing touch, however. Also, I took out some of the cake mixture to make 6 cupcakes because I was actually using a square 20cm cake tin rather than the one mentioned in the recipe. The white chocolate icing in the recipe was so much easier to prepare and work with than a gananche and this recipe has helped me to overcome my fear of baking with white chocolate! Watch out Milkybar, my mixing bowl and spoon are coming for you! 

What's your dream birthday cake?
Until next time, take care.
Love,
Mancunian Sheep x