This was my first attempt at a multi-layered cake and I was really happy with the outcome - it was really simple to do; here's how...
Ingredients
Cake
175g self-raising flour175g caster sugar
175g margarine
3 large eggs
1-2 tbsp milk
1 tsp baking powder
Buttercream
300g icing sugar125g margarine
2.5tbsp coconut milk
Gel food colouring in 2 colours
You'll also need
Fondant icing in white and 4 other coloursMethod
1) Heat oven to 180C
2) Grease and line baking trays. The ones I used were 20cm x 28cm and for this recipe you need 4 of them. I only have 2, so baked in 2 batches
3) Cream together the sugar and margarine
4) Add flour, eggs and enough milk to get a silky smooth mixture
5) Weigh the mixture and split evenly into 4. I found each needed to weigh 178g. You could do this by eye instead but I wanted to get the layers as identical as possible.
6) Spread a portion of the mixture into each of the baking trays and bake for about 15 minutes
7) Once baked, turn the cakes out onto cooling racks
8) Now make the buttercream by mixing the icing sugar, stork and coconut milk together
9) Split the mixture in 2 and add the colourings
10) When the cake layers have cooled cut them in half
11) Spread buttercream over each layer and pile them up, alternating the colours. Trim sides if necessary
12) Also cover the sides and top with buttercream, then cover the cake with white fondant
The next bit was by far the most time consuming. I really should have looked for a union jack cutter beforehand but hey ho!..
13) Draw a union jack on to baking paper and cut out the pieces to use as a template. Roll out each of the colours in turn and cut out all the pieces
14) Using water applied with a small brush, stick the fondant pieces to the cake
All done. Now simply cut and eat :-)
