My friend Caroline and I met in art college in 2008, and we've been good friends ever since. She likes dragons and heavy metal and black clothes, like I do, and in celebration of our shared gothy interests I decided to do something very, very different: a purple cake with black icing.
However, black icing is incredibly difficult to make and work with. The purple cake was simply a matter of adding some violet food colouring to my usual sponge cake recipe, but the icing was a completely different story altogether: you need a Hell of a lot of black food colouring.
In fact, I actually didn't have enough black colour. Even starting with buttercream icing that I had made using 80% dark chocolate to get a good, dark base, an entire tube of Dr Oetker gel still wasn't enough to get it jet black. I then had to start adding other colours from my inventory.Eventually, I had used black, blue, green, and red to get it as dark as I needed. And using that amount of colouring has some unfortunate side effects: staining of the mouth, tongue, and teeth, and digestive upset.
Next time, I think I may just glaze the finished iced cake with black mirror glaze or something. But I don't think I'll be working with completely black icing anymore!
I would have got some photos of the inside of the cake too, to show off the lovely purple interior, however we all got so carried away with eating it that I forgot! Sometimes these things are better off enjoyed in the moment, I suppose.
The next major birthday I'll have to cater for will by my sister's in early August. She usually goes for cheesecake, or super chocolate cake. Like I've said in many blogs past, trying to come up with new ideas for birthday cakes gets very tedious!
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