Number-shaped cake mould

This week I used a Lekue silicon mould  to make a cake in the shape of a number 3. These are available from Stangers Cookshop in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, for hire or purchase and are a treat to use.  The cake slides out of the mould like a greased-up seal.

There is a recipe on the back of the packaging that will make a fairly shallow cake (ignore the references to yeast, it’s a just mistranslation of baking powder). A recipe for an 8 inch sponge works well in the mould – use the whole amount you would split between two sandwich tins. Jess used Lorraine Pascale’s Malteser cake recipe to make this beautiful 9-shaped cake. 

You could of course turn the cake upside down and make a number 6. Sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but I once spent half an hour fuming that my number cookie cutter set was missing a 9….

I used a chocolate Madeira recipe for this number 3, slicing it in half to fill it with buttercream. This would be a quick way of making a cake if someone was 33, like Will Young or Jesus Christ. 

Instead I sandwiched the two halves back into “on its own, number three”, crumb-coated the whole cake and covered it with sugar paste. And that’s it – far easier than cutting out a number shape with a template. Highly recommended.