bakey cakelicious: Hickory Dickory Clock

Cake # 3 was the first official birthday cake, to celebrate l'anniversaire de Jane-o. Following French class, I was pressed for time, so a packet mix was selected as the way forward. Given the the call for brown icing, chocolate seemed the natural choice for this one and so the Coles choc packet mix had its first run.

Improvising a little due to my lack of a large, deep rectangular cake tin, I made a loaf plus a square, which I cut in half diagonally to create the triangle. I also decided to try lining the tin rather than greasing it for once, to see if that stopped the edges from drying out as much. Lesson learned: if the paper is not flat to the tin before you put it in the oven, it won't work itself out while baking - my beautifully risen cakes unfortunately had a few kinks in the sides where the paper was sticking out ... whoops! Luckily, it was only a small issue and nothing that volumes of chocolate icing couldn't cover.

To decorate, I utilised the handy choccie icing that came with the packet mixes. They turned out a bit darker than the pic, but still looked (and TASTED) great. I also tweaked the pink icing, adding some strawberry jam to add to its authenticity (thanks Martha, for the hot tip on this one).

Two packs of choc beanies (there weren't any big packs of smarties in the supermarket) were needed to reach the pink smartie count, while both traditional and pink liquorice were finely sliced to make whiskers and tails for the prune mice. What could have become a drama in forgetting to pick up freckles was resolved through some quick thinking improvisation with marshmellows and sprinkles (from the number four cake decorations).

A lucky pickup - a pack of cake decorating letters, already piped and dried - in the supermarket saved the time it would have taken to pipe numbers on the clock, and really stood out against the dark icing. With these, I was also able to personalise the cake for the birthday girl. Finalising the decorations in the wee hours this morning, it looked like it had shaped up to be a good one.

The real test however was by the highly tuned taste-buds of my colleages. Again, the Coles packet mix proved a winner - light and fluffy with great-tasting icing! There was plenty of cake to go round (even with an additional birthday girl) bolstered by the mini strawberry cupcakes that I also baked for our visiting former Business Management Director.