Name of baker
Kelly Davis

Name of cake
Golden Dragon
Classic chocolate cake recipe from my homeland of New Zealand

Ingredients
175g butter, softened
1tsp vanilla essence
1 ¾ cups sugar
3 eggs
½ cup cocoa
2 cups plain flour
2tsp baking powder
1 cup milk

Method
Grease a lined 22cm round cake tin.
Pre-heat oven to 180c
Cream butter, vanilla essence and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time. Sift cocoa, flour and baking powder together. Add to creamed mixture.  Add milk slowly.
Pour into cake tin and bake for 30 minutes.
Make a round cake, four small rectangular cakes and one loaf so you’ll have all the pieces you need to make the dragon.

I have to confess that I found the instructions for building the dragon cake online here
I did a ‘crumb coat’ of the icing first, which I left for a few hours.  This sealed in the crumbs and stopped them from coming through the top layer of icing. It’s a great technique that gives your cake a more professional finish.  The hardest part was getting the scaly texture of the icing to look deliberate and dragon-like.  When all was done I added edible gold spray to make the dragon sparkle.

About the baker
I have lived in Hackney for more than 10 years and love this community.  I volunteer with a few local organisations and thoroughly enjoy being as involved as I can in things going on in this vibrant corner of London.
I have baked quirky – and sometimes downright weird – cakes for friends and family for years but volunteering with Free Cakes for Hackney Kids gives me the chance to try some of the fun creations that children appreciate. I am loving every minute of it and looking forward to the next challenge. I like the anonymity of making a child or family a cake – it’s a bit like being a baking fairy!

Name of baker: Shelly Khaled, Gail Clarke & Jo Odeogberin

Name of cake: Football Number One!

Ingredients:
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour
125g plain flour
250g margarine (or butter, but I used stork)
250g superfine caster sugar
4 tbs milk

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160c
• Beat the butter or margarine until soft, add the sugar, then beat until pale-coloured and fluffy.
• Add the eggs, one at a time, with a tablespoon or two of flour to prevent curdling.
• Mix the remaining flour at a slow speed to combine well
• Add the milk to make a good dropping consistency
• Pour the cake mixture into the well-greased Football pans..
• Bake in a preheated oven (160C) for about one hour fifteen minutes
• Check with skewer to see if it’s cooked – if there is any runny mixture on the skewer continue cooking, checking at 10 – 15 minute intervals until clean skewer emerges
• When cooked, leave the cake to cool in the bowl for 10 minutes, then, turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
• Roll out your white fondant icing and smooth in place over your cake.
• Roll out the red fondant icing, cut circles of icing and then trim these into hexagonal shapes.
• Slightly dampen the underneath of one of the hexagonal shapes with apricot jam and place it onto the cake, drawing lines radiating from it to connect to the next hexagonal shape.

About the baker:
The three of us really enjoy dedicating our free time to charity work and especially running 5k’s for children’s charity.
All of us have children of our own and we know just how important having a memory of a special birthday cake can go such a long way to build the confidence of a child.
A birthday is more significant than any other day in the calendar, as without this day, any other experiences a child has would not take place. A personalised cake can make a child feel loved, cared for and special.
The three of us have never baked as a team before and this was our first time. We got together on a Friday night, instead of going out to party and we had such an entertaining evening, laughing and also enjoying creating a bespoke cake for a one year old child.

Pictured below, our wonderful bakers Gail Clarke, Jo Odeogberin and Shelly Khaled