Mothers' Day Mimosa Cake

When the random letter generator picked out M as the letter of the month for Alphabakes, I was really pleased. It's not difficult to think of ingredients or cakes beginning with the letter M, and it's perfect timing as Mother's Day is in March! I'd already decided to take my mum a cake when I go down to see her (even though I'd have to be careful, with the journey involving a 15 minute walk, two trains and a car) and I'd also bought a new cake mould I wanted to try out, from www.siliconmoulds.com. They sell silicon moulds (duh) in all sorts of shapes, including individual alphabet letters. For just a couple of pounds I bought myself an M and a U.... So I could spell out mum!

I had loads of ideas for cakes beginning with M - even though I could have just entered a "mum" cake into Alphabakes, I wanted the actual cake to begin with M as well. Maltesers popped into my mind right away, but I can definitely remember from my childhood that my mum has strong feelings about maltesers - only I can't remember if it's because she really likes them, or if it's the one type of chocolate she hates! I had a horrible feeling it was the latter so thought I'd better not make a malteser cake. Though mum, if you're reading this and you do like them - you can have one next time! (Editor's note - I checked and she doesn't like them, phew!)

I also thought of millefeuille - but that wouldn't have worked in this mould - and mississippi mud pie, but my dad doesn't like chocolate. I kept coming back to one particular word - mimosa. I knew it was a type of cocktail and also a type of flower, but couldn't remember any more about it. It was interesting to find via google that there are two types of mimosa cake - one that is based on the yellow flower, and appears to be a traditional Italian dessert containing chantilly cream and is lemon flavoured, and the other a type of cake that uses the ingredients from a mimosa cocktail - champagne and orange juice! I decided to go with the latter as it seemed more of a treat and quite good for Mothers' Day.

I found a recipe I liked the sound of here by Shayla Ebsen - check out the site.

It's a US recipe so all the measurements are in cups. Luckily, my boyfriend's mum bought me a handy set of measuring cups on her holiday to America last year - each one is marked "one cup", "half cup", "quarter cup" and so on, right down to a quarter teaspoon. So that made measuring out the ingredients really easy!

The recipe called for a cup of champagne so I used cava. It bubbled when I added it to the cake mix!

Folding the whisked egg whites into the cake mix

Here are the moulds I bought - they are about six inches big and two inches deep, roughly

They're justified, and they're ancient.....

I can't spell....

Only kidding! I decided I wanted to sandwich two cakes together rather than slice one in half to fill it, so I made two of each letter. However as I only had one 'M', this meant putting the mould in the oven four times over, so the process took a fair while!

The only problem I had was with the filling. I followed the recipe, which involved: mixing sugar, cornstarch, grated orange peel and salt. Adding freshly squeezed orange juice, water and egg yolks.  Cook over medium heat until the mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly. Continue to cook for two more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted and combined. Allow the filling to cool completely before spreading it between the cake layers.



Sounds fine, right? Even though the mixture seemed quite thick when it had cooled, it was still pretty soft, unlike buttercream which I would say is comparatively stiff. When I sandwiches the two pieces of the cake together, the filling totally squidged out (technical term there) and looked rubbish! So to rectify it I whipped up some orange-flavoured buttercream and added some of the orange filling to it. I then spread a thin layer of the original orange filling over the cake and then added the buttercream on top.

I decided to decorate the cake with flowers and used mainly wafer flowers from Dr Oetker. I also used a flower plunger cutter with some fondant icing

 I also used a butterfly cutter with some fondant, but the fondant was too soft, even though I did mix it with some gum tragacanth. Maybe I didn't do it right - hopefully this is something I will learn on my cake decorating course!

Even so I think it looks pretty cute

The cake tasted nice - it was quite dense and not too sweet and there was definitely a hint of orange. Not sure whether I would have tasted the champagne/cava if I didn't know it was in there, but I thought the cake turned out pretty well, and my mum liked it!

So obviously I am entering my Mothers' Day Mimosa 'Mum' cake into this month's Alphabakes!

I'm updating this to send it to Vadrhini's Bake Fest, as the theme is Mother's Day and baking for our mums. For some reason Mother's Day is March in the UK but it seems to be in May in a lot of other countries! The blog event is hosted by TangyMind and  Vardhini.