My fabulous Father-in-law turned 70 this week and I knew the perfect cake I wanted to make for him! As long as I have known him (16 years!!!), he has always enjoyed a small dram of Jameson's Irish Whiskey at the end of an evening out (with a little bit of water and no ice, incase you were wondering!). I had seen on Pinterest some birthday cakes made in the style of a whiskey barrel that had caught my eye, so I thought I would give it a try. When I am first deciding what cake to make and how to tackle it, I have a good scroll through Pinterest for lots of different design ideas and I then watch through a handful of YouTube videos to get a feel for how to tackle the technical bits.
I then gathered my supplies - a mixture of eBay, Morrisons and of course - Hobbycraft!!!! The wood effect cake board was found on eBay alongside the personalised edible Jameson cake topper. I got the cake ingredients and mini bottles of whiskey from the supermarket and then the icing and wood stencil was from Hobbycraft (along with about 20 other craft items that I didn't really need!!!).
I baked 4 chocolate sponge cakes using my Nan's trusty 6 oz recipe (see blog post on coffee cake for recipe - just switch out the coffee for cocoa) in a 7 inch tin. I decided to just do a straight chocolate cake with chocolate icing so that my nieces and nephews could enjoy the cake too. If you were baking this cake for an adults only party, you could consider adding whiskey to the buttercream.
I covered the whole cake in chocolate buttercream, scraped some off and popped into the fridge for 30 mins. Once set, I popped the cake onto a cake board with a dab of icing to hold it in place. I then prepared the fondant icing. I decided to go with Renshaw's Chocolate flavour fondant icing this icing, so it had a bit more flavour to it, otherwise I find normal fondant can be quite thick and chalky. I rolled out the fondant and cut into rectangles and then used an embosser to create a wood effect, by pressing it on top of the icing and rolling a rolling pin on the top. I then used a dab of water to fix these pieces to the cake and overlap them slightly so that they looked like a barrel.
I then rolled out a long thin piece of black fondant icing to wrap around the barrel. I started by trying to roll out one long piece, but it kept breaking, so I rolled it out in smaller sections and attached to the cake with water. I then put some black 'joints' to cover the joins.
I then attached the sugar paste label to the top of the cake (I ordered a custom one from ebay - check out her online shop here - https://www.bluevanilladesigns.com).
Here is a sneak peek of the inside....
I made the cake the day before the party and stored it in an airtight container so it stayed moist and fresh. It went down well with the birthday boy and it has got me thinking what other alcoholic celebration cakes I could try making next....
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