The brief for this cake was for it to be A4 sized with a motorbike riding across. It is a vanilla madeira cake with the usual vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam. The whole cake is edible except for the cake drum and ribbon. I used dried spaghetti to stiffen the road sign and support the motorbike. I really like the hills with the sheep and the grassy verge to the cake.
Can you guess the age of the birthday boy? Hint: the roadsign and the number plate.
Last week saw the occasion of a family birthday – my stepdaughter. She had previously dropped not-so-subtle hints mentioning the Great Dragon from Merlin, cake and her birthday in one sentence. My first port of call was good old Google as I am into Merlin like she is (well, I am not into Merlin at all really). It was hard to tell from the footage I could find whether Kilgharrah (as I now know him!) has four legs or two. Still unsure, I went for four but then the wings covered the back legs anyway so it was a redundant quandary!
I kept things simple as we weren’t planning anything big – just a nice roast dinner together with birthday cake for afters, and it was really just an opportunity to try making a different model. The cake is chocolate and was baked in a silicon bowl to give a pseudo rock shape to work with. It is layered with chocolate buttercream and covered in overlapping strips of grey icing which was painted when dry to increase the rocky effect. I modelled the dragon in white and then painted it in paste colours with gold highlights.
The birthday girl was ecstatic with her birthday cake and we weren’t able to persuade her to cut it there an then. She insisted on taking it home. Fortunately, anticipating this I had earlier dipped into my stock of frozen cake offcuts so we didn’t have to go without cake after our meal!
Well, it seems to have been a summer of ever popular Superheroes and here is my latest birthday cake. This one is a Batman cake for Archie’s fourth birthday party today.
Beyond the Batman theme, cake flavour and portions required, I was given free rein to come up with the design – yay! It was great fun to make another tiered cake and use the top tier as a support for the model Batman and to elevate his cape. I really like the burst of bats around his head and the Gotham city inspired skyline around the bottom tier. Details on the Batman model are painted on as well as the windows in the skyscrapers below. I was concerned about the Batman model looking like Delboy in that famous Only Fools and Horses scene but I think I avoided it don’t you?
The cake itself is a chocolate fudge cake and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is much more difficult to work with than madeira, even with no carving involved! I really love the recipe though so it is well worth the effort.
This cake could be made in different sizes and with different Superheroes – how about Spiderman or Superman?
Happy Birthday Archie!
janehuntley 