Pizza Birthday Cake

Pizza or Cake?

This theme cake is definitely a hit with a pizza love. Make your pizza cake even more realistic with  your favourite pizza toppings. 

Ingredients:

Base:

• 100g golden castor sugar
• 100g softened butter
• 2 eggs
• 100g self raising flour
• pinch of baking powder and salt
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Decorations:

• 250g of dough coloured sugar paste, use yellow and brown food colouring gel
• apricot jam or golden syrup
• 200g buttercream
• some red gel food colouring
• 3-4 tbsp raspberry or strawberry jam
• 70g-100g of light yellow sugar paste, keep in the freezer to harden
• basil leaves, optional

Pepperoni topping:

• 50g ready roll Teddy Bear Brown sugar paste
• some red gel food colouring
• 25-40g white sugar paste

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC for fan assist oven. Grease and line a 10 inch cake tin with baking paper.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and golden castor sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract.

Sift in the self raising flour, baking powder and salt. Gently fold until just combined. Do not overmix.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and smooth out the surface with a spatula. However do not smooth  all the way of the cake tin. Leave about ½ inch. This is to make the pizza cake looks more realistic. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, prepare the decorations. 

For the pepperoni, roll out the teddy bear brown sugar paste and add some red gel colouring (bit by bit) until you achieve the right colour of the pepperoni. Once you are happy with the colour, roll out into sausage and cut into half. Lightly flatten each sausage. Then take the white and roll it out and cut the same length as the red. Put on top each of the white on top the red and stack it up on top of each other. Add a bit of white on the sides. Roll it out and cut into half again. Stack it up on top of each other. Repeat this process for about 4-5 times until you have the marbley effect.  Slice the sausage and roll it out as thin as possible, cut out circles, then edges were curled using a ball tool. The circles were to let dry. Before topping the cake with the pepperoni, lightly brush a thin layer of vegetable oil to get the shine.

Next step is to roll out dough-coloured sugar paste into a sausage shape and flatten it using your fingertips. Stick it to the edges of the cake with a little apricot jam or golden syrup.

Lightly add some black colouring around the pizza to make the charred effect. Use a blowtorch to scorch the sugar paste or cover the centre of the cake with foil and then grill.

For the "tomato paste", add the red gel to the buttercream and mix in the strawberry or raspberry jam. Mix well. Spread the mixture over the centre of the cake.

Take the frozen light yellow sugar paste from the freezer. Using a grater, grate the "cheese" over the tomato paste. 

When you are happy with the amount of cheese on top of the pizza, finally top up the pizza with the pepperoni. Top with fresh basil leaves to dress the cake and to add the finishing touched. 

Notes: to resemble mozzarella, loosen some uncoloured buttercream with water until dropping consistency. Then use two teaspoons to drop the buttercream onto the cake in small blobs. Smooth with a spoon to create the desired effect.

For olives, slice liquorice and use a small metal piping nozzle to cut out the centre to look like pitted olives.