Cherry.

I went into Lidl the other day to get some stuff to make myself some dinner and saw a man scooping bright red cherries into a bag. This is when I thought I need to use those cherries somehow. So proceeded to scoop cherries into my own bag (I definitely went overboard and £5 later….)

Earlier on in the week A surprised me when he got in from work with my early birthday present. It was probably midnight and I was half asleep but he insisted I came and saw it (probably because it’s too big to hide from my nosey self).

Look at how beautiful and thoughtful this is! No more doing everything by hand! And, it’ll save on the dishes haha.

So I have £5 worth of cherries and a fancy new mixer to play with, what should I make? I previously mentioned I have a huge project coming up, where I am making my friends wedding cake *insert excitement and nerves*. We decided she wanted a naked cake which I have made once previously for a friends birthday so I want to practice this style of decoration, but not the specific cake(s) I’ll be making for the wedding. I have been reading a lot about how to prefect the naked cake and it’s all about the crumb of the cake, the thickness of the buttercream and temperature (everything in baking seems to be about the correct temperature). I don’t have the correct equipment for this style of decoration, yet, so this first attempt wasn’t 100%. But I am really pleased with how it turned out. Unlike the one I made for my friends birthday, I was calmer, and the buttercream wasn’t melting everywhere.

As you can see the crumb from the cake started to crumble and go into the buttercream, but I think that’s because it was a really moist cake from the fruit! I also used a knife to do this rather than a spatula so I was basically scraping the cake rather than smoothing buttercream onto the sides haha. Next on the shopping list will be a spatula!

I don’t know why but when I’m on placement my anxiety seems to increase. I panic about going there, even though I know where I’m going, who I work with etc etc. There’ a kind of fear that bubbles up in my stomach. For me, anxiety is more physical then mental. When I’m nervous and/or excited about something I usually end up feeling sick, and have in the past spent the time I should be enjoying something, being sick. When I first moved to Edinburgh and joined a new school I had to take some time off very early on because of this. Luckily, I found a group of friends quickly and still have a strong friendship with them. Yesterday at placement there was two registered nurses on, when there is meant to be four. Welcome to the NHS. I tried to be as helpful as possible, taking peoples observations (their blood pressure, pulse, heart rate, saturation levels, temperature and respiration rate), assisting people into the shower, making and cleaning beds, filling out care rounding (paperwork which needs to be filled out roughly every 3 hours where we ask the patient if they are in pain, have something to drink, if they have changed their position recently and other questions similar to this) and got to help put up fluids for a patient with an incredibly low blood pressure. I was working alongside one of the nurses but made sure I was helpful to the other nurse on the ward too. I also assisted the theatre staff taking a patient down for her surgery and another lady to an ultrasound scan. Even though it was an incredibly busy and heavy shift I actually felt part of the team for the first time this placement. And felt like I was doing something to help rather than getting in the way of the nurses working. Even though I was only covering the surface of what the registered nurses were actually doing it reminded me that I can do this job and I’m actually good at it.

Anyway, recipe, that’s what you’re all here for right?

Cake

This is enough to make two eight inch cakes.

400g Fresh Cherries

350g Butter

350g Sugar

4 Eggs

1 tsp Ground Black Pepper

250g Plain Flour

3 tsp Baking Powder

To de-stone the cherries I sat on the floor with the telly on and a cup of coffee with the oven pre-heating (180 degrees Celsius).

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, which was super easy with my new mixer! Add the eggs one at a time.

Weigh out the dry ingredients and add into the butter mix slowly. Save one spoon of the flour and sprinkle over the cherries.

Look how light and fluffy that cake mix is!! Gently fold the cherries into the cake mix.

Separate the mix into two pre-prepared cake tins. Bake for 35-40 minutes until a knife comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 20 minutes and then take out and cool further on a cooling rack.

Buttercream

450g Butter at room temperature

500g Icing sugar

1 Tbsp Lime Zest

I mixed the butter on its own first to make sure it was really soft. Then using the safety guard on the mixer (otherwise you will decorate your kitchen with white dust) add the icing sugar bit by bit.

Mix in the lime zest and put into two different piping bags, I used one without a nozzle and one with for decoration, place in the fridge to cool.

Add a layer of butter cream to the first cake, making sure it comes over the edge slightly. Pop the second cake on top, with the flattest side facing up. Smooth out the buttercream around the sides adding a little more to create the naked effect. Add a thin later to the top of the cake making sure it’s nice and smooth. Using the nozzle pipe the decoration and then place fresh cherries on top.

Now that I’ve made a pretty good second attempt at a naked cake decoration I can’t wait to try again and perfect my technique ready for the wedding cake!