Time to Par-tay!

  The man who was, and probably still is, my best man is catching up with me, age wise. Yesterday was his birthday. Today is the party, and as you read this there's a good chance I'll be dancing with a cocktail shaker like it's a set of maracas at a samba party. I had thought of using the simile of the cocktail shaker being shaken like a wailing stepchild in the hands of, (Honestly, you're not helping yourself. -Ed)

 

  As there was a lot for his missus to organise, she got in touch for a little help and asked if I could sort out a cake. I'm not sure why she thought I'd be the best person to ask but I wanted to help. As it's quite a special birthday, a Buzz Lightyear cake from Tesco wasn't going to be sufficient, I was going to have to bake.

  I've a smashing recipe for that most predictable of birthday cakes, a chocolate sponge. It got mixed, baked, cooled, split, filled with a praline cream and made ready for the decoration, a mirror glaze. This is a new project of mine as it can look quite impressive. I say, 'can' because I don't think I have the skills yet.

  As none of my attempts have produced anything like a mirror I'll be practicing a lot more, but I did realise that the temperature of the glaze makes a difference. Pour it on when it's too hot and it falls off the cake leaving a thin coating, too cold and it doesn't spread out, leaving the cake looking like someone spilled some congealed ectoplasm over it. (What are you talking about? -Ed).

  Above is today's attempt. While completely edible and definitely delicious, you can see that this wasn't quite what I had set out to produce. Instead it's a kind of a rescue and cover up. Fortunately it wasn't such a car crash that I had to scrape everything off and start again, on top of which there's a good chance that by the time we light the candles and dim the lights, the revellers will be struggling a bit with their vision anyway.

Altogether, Happy birthday to you. Happy birthd... etc.

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com