Life..... Red Nose Day 2013

Far be it for me to detract from such a worthy cause especially since Red Nose Day is celebrating it's 25th year of raising around £900 million since it started but it's bought out the competitor in me this year. And this is not good. I can barely let control go at the best of times but the school Bake Off Competion had me thinking of all sorts of great recipes until the news filtered through that this was a kids competition. Ok time to scale down those grand ideas. But give over control of the bake - shudder.

In the end I did have total control of the bake because let's face it kids and ovens don't mix. It was still experimental because I had never made this cake before. I made a coca-cola cake. Yes it was the real thing. I couldn't taste this creation because it asked for marshmallows and I'm a vegetarian. But I did hand over control of the decorating to my Mum and the Oldest One. Thanks to my friend AtNumber 29 who gave me a pot of red edible glitter (sorry I need to buy you more), I left the kitchen.

I kept returning but made myself leave. To give them a blank icing canvas I did make the buttercream icing and apply to a double layer cake. However what is it with red food colouring and turning icing dark pink. We wanted red red not pink red. We added small amount of cocoa powder, coca cola and even purple food colouring. It was still red pink.

How do you make icing of any variety red red? i used a who.e tube and more of red food coloring. Answers on a postcard please.

However red glitter saved the day as did the red glitter icing balls and the red nose Mum went out to buy. The lure of competion is so bad that Mum suggested I shouldn't be too worried if I, I mean Oldest One, didn't win. I gave her a look. Seriously how bad is that. A small charitable competition to raise money and I want to smash the competition. Hang my head in shame, with a wink and crossed fingers for luck.

So deep breath I present to you the coca cola cake with marshmallows and red edible glitter icing.