Pretty Pink Birthday Cake

My mum recently visited England and returned with a plethora of baking supplies!! I was so excited by the look of this pink food colouring I just had to use it ASAP! Luckily it was her birthday so I had an excuse! I also used shimmer sugar, mini marshmallows and non-edible confetti to create this pink masterpiece!

I followed the traditional, foolproof sponge recipe from the Odlums website (as used in other posts!) and it worked a treat! It stayed fresh for a couple of days after and it was neither heavy nor bland. Definitely a go-to recipe that took mere minutes to prepare.

Although I wasn't not a fan of jam I used Strawberry Preserve here to humour the other members of my family- and it tasted amazing! I'm officially converted! :)

For the icing I copied the Magnolia Bakery Traditional Vanilla Buttercream Icing, from the book The Complete Magnolia Bakery. I'd advise not to use the milk as indicated in the recipe as the icing really never sets because of it (and it's a constant worry as to the Best Before date of the milk afterwards!) Because of the runny consistency of the icing the top layer of the cake looked treacherous, however the cake didn't last long enough for the construction to be tested! The food colouring was bought in the Morrison's in the UK and is a fantastic product! Much better than trying to guage the pinkness while using red dye! It also has a built-in dropper which makes measuring much easier!

I used miniature marshmallows to spell out "MUM". I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of this before! They were perfect to use for writing as they stay stable after and for short words are big enough so that the message isn't lost atop a large cake! I wanted to pipe "Happy Birthday", however Mum came home early, so I downgraded to some cute (unfortunately non-edible) confetti I had... I think the shimmer sugar (Dr. Oetker, available at all good supermarkets) made up for it though!

A truly sweet cake which I think would be wonderful for a fairy princess-themed party!