Fitzbillies cakes - flavours, taste tests and icing
The humble iced cake is making a star return to the baking world. Remember those sticky iced cakes you used to have in the school canteen, sprinkled with hundreds and thousands? That’s just the start of our love of cake and it doesn’t end there. Variations on iced cakes are becoming a hot trend in the baking world. They are the centrepiece of celebrations large and small: birthdays, tea parties, weddings and christenings. A few years ago, a two-layer cake with a few candles would have sufficed. But a combination of Instagram and The Great British Bake off has resulted in cake inflation.
Flavour favourites
Lemon cake is our most popular flavour for weddings, parties and summer celebrations. We make it in every size - a simple iced sponge cake to serve for tea to a five-tier wedding cake covered in fresh fruit, roses and macarons.
Keeping our chocolate cake moist
We have worked continuously on our chocolate cake recipe over the years. Sometimes we test four recipes on customers in the shop - the existing recipe and three new variants. The brief to the bakers is always ‘more moist and less sweet’. Our ultimate chocolate cake won the taste test with its dense, moist texture and dark chocolatey taste.
Red velvet
Who doesn’t love a bit of cream cheese frosting paired with a deep red sponge? We first started making our red velvet cake four or five years ago and it flies out of the shop as soon as we put it on the counter. Those who know it love it. Those who don’t think it’s a bit weird to put so much food colouring in a cake, but they are quickly converted after their first bite.
Icing options
We use 3 different types of icing depending on the cake we are decorating: cream cheese icing, chocolate cream cheese icing and traditional buttercream icing.
Here’s our tried and tested recipe for cream cheese icing for you to make and enjoy at home.
Cream cheese icing recipe
This recipe makes enough to fill, crumb coat and cover a four-layer 18cm cake or 24 cupcakes.
- 750g icing sugar
- 300g cream cheese
- 75g unsalted butter, very soft
- Sift the icing sugar into a bowl of a stand mixer
- Add the cream cheese, butter and any flavouring of your choice.
- Put a tea towel over the mixer and start on a slow speed, mix until combined.
- If the icing has a good texture, you can start icing as soon as the cake is completely cold. If it seems a bit soft, put it in the fridge for an hour.
We also use this cream cheese icing recipe for our Bake at home cinnamon buns.