Birthday cake plans

With less than a month to go until Flame’s 8th birthday, I thought it wise to sit down and plan what to do. I had grand ideas of a purple and gold cake with a paisley design, but then came back to reality and thought Flame would probably prefer something with flowers and butterflies. I’d like some of the design to be three-dimensional, so the plan is to roll out some icing and then use cutters to get the shaping right, with a little bit of tweaking to get them to stand proud of the cake surface. I found a set of different butterfly cutters on eBay this morning, and so I have a starting point.

This evening, I decided to see if I might be any good at making flowers… Er, without any tools whatsoever! I think the result looks passable for a family cake. I am also bearing in mind that the recipient doesn’t have high hopes thanks to my disastrous attempt at making a Powerpuff Girls cake for her birthday one year (very long ago, and yet she still hasn’t forgotten!). I bought supermarket cakes for a few birthdays after that so we could all get over the negative experience!!

I used a little wodge of ready to roll fondant icing to try out this rose. I rolled an egg shape in my palms, made it a bit pointy at one end, then impaled it on a skewer. Next, I squidged petal shapes between my fingers and gradually wrapped them round individually to make the flower. It looks chunkier than I’d like, and there’s a lot of icing gunked up at the back, but then I was only using my fingers – if I got a proper set of tools and maybe some petal cutters, I’m sure I could do better. I’m not going as far as to do all the petal veining as I think that would be overkill for a complete beginner like me.

So the plan is to do a simple white cake with the sorts of flowers we have in the garden. I’m probably not going to do roses on the cake after all, because I want to concentrate on the kinds of flowers that little girls pick and bring to their mums, like forget-me-nots and pansies. Having said that, I will have to see what’s available at the sugarcraft emporium… I’d really like to do dandelions, but I bet I can’t get cutters for that, with it being a weed and all!

Anyway, I won’t post anymore on this topic until after the birthday candles are all blown out, in case Flame looks over my shoulder and discovers my secret plans…!

Entry plonked in Life @ 8:50 pm