Party Pieces Age One Cake Kit

As my family will be gathering in London during the Jubilee bank holiday, we decided to do a proper celebration for Clay's 1st birthday when we meet up. We just did a smaller celebration today as it is his official birthday. I have been wondering what to do for his birthday cake for some time now. I had a master plan in my mind, but it would be too much work for just the four of us to enjoy. So I'm keeping the master piece (fingers crossed it won't fell through) for the Jubilee holiday.

I could buy a cake from the shops, but it's not quite homemade, which I hoped to do. However, it started to get so warm during the day in my kitchen that I just want to stay out from there. Thankfully I was offered an Age One Cake kit from Party Pieces, which saved me time from staying in the hot kitchen with the hot oven on.

Make by the Cake Kit company

The kit came with a cake mix, icing for covering the cake and making icing decorations, 2 reusable circle cutters, a candle and holder, a cake board, disposable cake mould, template and instructions.

I was pretty impressed with what came with the kit. You can basically bring this kit to anywhere that has an oven and water, and transform it into a birthday cake that serves 25-30 child size portions! (Should have saved this for London gathering!)

All you need is to add 300ml of water and 5 tablespoon of vegetable oil and whisk it. It becomes thick and glossy like meringue. You then whisk in another 140ml of water and beat in air for another 3 minutes, while baking takes 40.

Pour the batter in the pre-greased disposable box and you can put it in the oven! The whole process only took me less than 10 minutes!

Before baking, the cake mix smelled lovely of butter (although it doesn't contain butter). It is more or less as versatile as homemade cake batter, so I decided to add zest of one lemon to turn the cake into a lemon cake, which was my original plan for Clay's birthday cake. The cake smelled absolutely gorgeous when it came out from the oven. You can of course add other flavourings like vanilla essence, or even colour (make it into a rainbow cake with different colours!) 

After cutting out the One shape using the template, I was left with two big chunks of cakes. Hubby really liked it and ate one whole chunk! I think it was not bad, it tasted quite similar to a Madeira cake from a supermarket. But of course, nothing is better than my own homemade cakes! *Evil laughter*

The recipe asked for jam only to spread on top of the cake before covering it with icing, but I decided to slice the cake into three layers, made a lemon syrup to moisten each layer (the texture of the cake is a bit like pound cake, but the syrup was more to balance the sweetness from the icing), and a purple coloured lemon cream cheese icing to cream between the layers as well as all over the cake.

I then chilled the cake in the fridge for half an hour (the cream cheese was basically melting in the heat) before covering it with icing. It was my first time ever making a cake with icing cover, and it wasn't the easiest thing to do for a first timer (or someone who has minimal amount of patience). I kneaded the icing three times as it kept sticking on my marble board, even with icing sugar dusted all over it. And because of that, the icing became drier than before and cracked easily when I finally got the right size to cover the cake.

Anyhow, I managed and was still happy with it. It was my first time and now I can tick something else off my to do list! I then moved on to decorating the cake, but my brain won't function, so I just added Clay's name on the cake and stuck to the dotty pattern. You can, of course, use other shapes or decorations.

I did mix the colours to create new colours though. I just love aqua colour. I tried making purple but it was a bit dark (Clay's name was purple). The orange was lovely but it doesn't seem to go with the theme. Anyway, the cake had a lovely colour combination especially after cutting it. Blue, aqua and purple always work.

Overall, I think that the cake mix is very handy if you want to cut out some of your work and preparation time. The cake looked impressive, and it is still homemade. It would have saved me even more time if I have sticked to the recipe, but well, I always like a good challenge.

The cake mix was created by the Cake Kit company, who specialises in cake kits, if you are interested you can take a look at Party Pieces' website (blue link above) for other choices. The Age One cake kit cost £16.99 and comes with either gold or chocolate sponge cake mix depending on your choice.

Disclosure: I was sent a cake kit to try; all opinions are honest and my own