Piggy by Serena

I made a classic Victoria sponge recipe (without the Rose water) in two cake tins, though I should have used a hemisphere cake tin for the top half to make it more rounded ! Then I made lots of buttercream with a touch of ground vanilla bean. To make fondant icing I sifted 1 kilo of pure icing sugar and used 500g of white marshmallows in a large bowl, melted them slightly in microwave for 1 -2 mins with 1 tablespoon of water and about 1 tablespoon of Beetroot juice (from a packet of cooked beets in veg section of supermarket) (moderate Salicylates) and then I mixed in all the icing sugar, but kept at least 1 cup for rolling – this was the very tough bit. The recipe I used says to refrigerate the fondant the night before using and then get it out of the fridge a few hours before using to get it back to room temp. I used buttercream in the middle of the cake and smeared it around the top to hold the fondant in place. I used choc icing (very high amines) for the eyes as I couldn’t find anything else but these can be easily pulled off with the icing piece for the eye base when you are cutting. You can also use pear jam in the middle for extra taste and texture. It was very nice with pear jam when I made another cake with leftover fondant. For the muddy part I used carob powder with remaining buttercream which didn’t achieve the desired muddy colour I was going for but worked ok.

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