Zoya's Baptismal Cake

So who is Zoya?  Zoya is Dr Marie's great grand niece.  She is Dr Marie's sister's daughter's son's daughter.  

Both Zoya's mother and father waited for her birth and we stormed heaven with prayers and God looked on Persis and Jonathan with pity and love and gave them this miracle baby.  

AND Zoya will be baptised on Sunday 18 January 2015 and I have been given the honour to make the cake for the baptism. 

Why is the cake all white? The cake is all white because it symbolises Zoya's dignity as a child of God after her baptism. After baptism, Zoya becomes a child of God and is sinless and pure and white signifies these aspects of the dignity of a child of God.  

Why are there doves on the cake? Doves symbolise the Holy Spirit.  When Zoya is baptised, the Spirit of God dwells in her and she becomes the holy temple of the Lord.  

The cake is baked with 20 large free range eggs and I baked two 10 eggs square cakes and sandwiched them together with ganache.  It is a 10 inch square cake and is 5 inches high, excluding the flowers on the top.  

There is ganache in between the icing and the cake.  It is a very large cake and I will be able to slice 50 slices from this cake and some people might eat several slices each.  Well, at least some of my brothers and their sons in my community can eat several slices of this cake each, as they love my chocolate marble cake. 

Post Baptism party evaluation: I definitely sliced more than 50 pieces of cake.  I had lost count of the number of pieces of cake I sliced.  It was like feeding the 5000, I kept slicing and there was more cake to be sliced.  Many websites have indicated a 10 by 10 inch square cake could only slice into 50 pieces and there were many more slices into 50 from this cake!  

You can for example view this website and you will see a 10 inch square cake can slice 50 pieces. 

I used Dr Oetker Ready to Roll Icing and I thought this was not a suitable fondant icing for such a large, tall cake.  

In future, I need to use a professional grade fondant icing like Satin Ice when decorating such a tall cake and this will make such cake more expensive to make and decorate.  A 2.5 kg of Satin Ice costs around £15 and one will need just over 2 kg to cover such a cake. I can use the cheaper Dr Oetker fondant icing to cover the cake drum. 

I used a chocolate icing between the white fondant icing and the chocolate marble cake, and this chocolate icing was very delicious and so easy to use.  The only thing was that it was rather expensive and cost of the chocolate was £8 and the cream was £1.80 bringing it to nearly £10 just for the chocolate icing.  

I think it is worth paying for the chocolate icing.  The chocolate icing is much better than butter cream or marzipan as the barrier between the fondant icing and the cake. 

What do I like about this cake? 

I like the fact that everything you see on the cake, except the ribbon, cake board / cake drum, can be eaten. There are no cocktail sticks, pins, metal wires, polystyrene buds etc. on the cake or flowers.  I have seen people eating the flowers in the party, including adults.  

There are some cake makers who use store bought polystyrene buds to make roses.  If a child or an adult were to eat such a flower, even X-Ray will not be able to see the polystyrene.  Imagine a child eating a flower which has wires in it, what could have happened?  I think we should think of safety first and avoid using such materials to make flowers on cakes for human consumption. 

I like the cake sitting on a board which is four inches larger.  This means each side has a two inch space and I could decorate the sides with anything which is protruding and the decorations will not be affected during the transportation of the cake to the party venue.  

I particularly like the chocolate icing in between the cake and the fondant icing.  It tasted very delicious indeed.  Its only downside is the cost of such icing. 

The trend nowadays is to cover the drum with icing and ribbon.  The cake sits on a board which is then placed on this drum.  I really like this trend as it makes it very easy for me as a cake decorator to cover the cake with icing and then place the iced cake on the decorated drum.

I like the silver plinth on which the decorated cake sits.  It really gives the cake an elegant finish.

I also like the fact that this cake does not need to be refrigerated.  Who has such huge space in their fridge to accommodate such a cake?  One cannot even put any food in the fridge as the smell from the food will diffuse into the cake.

The cake is my famous chocolate marble cake.  It is light, soft and moist and full of flavour.  Many people in the party complemented me about this delicious cake.  Dr Marie has asked me if I could make the cake more firm and I said no because I have worked years to improve my mum's cake recipe to have a cake which is light, soft and moist.  I think this is the lightest butter cake I have tasted.   

The texture of the cake is worth describing.  It is not rough textured but has a very fine smooth texture. It has taken me a long time to understand how to produce consistently marbled chocolate cake which has a fine smooth texture. 

I cut the cake with a new huge pastry knife.  It cuts through ribbon, cake and everything.  This knife has really made my life easier.  Well done Lakeland for producing such a knife at such a reasonable cost.  So it looks like my other cake knives are redundant after acquiring this pastry knife from Lakeland. 

I also have a cutting board, which is used exclusively for cutting cakes.  Why? This is because the smell from food can migrate to the cake from the cutting board.  In addition, imagine someone using such a cutting board which has been used to cut meat?  I would rather not imagine such a thing. I have to remember food safety first!