THE 10th Birthday Cake...!

Well here is another of the retrospective posts I mentioned back when I started out...This is the tale of how I made my daughter Emily's 10th birthday cake...it is the most complicated cake I have made to date..I got the idea from here... but instead of using the suggested bought cakes, I made my own!

Step 1 - Bake a cake!! I used a 2x20cm cake pans for this one, and I used a basic 4 egg Victoria Sandwich recipe...Em had requested a marble cake, so I halved the batter and added some cocoa powder to one half. I then sandwiched the 2 cakes together using my Basic Vanilla Buttercream (that was tweaked to make it a chocolate one by adding some cocoa).

 


Step 2 - I then trimmed the cakes, so that the sides were even and the top and bottom (when stood on it's side!) were flat.

Step 3 - Frosting...Emily was very specific that she didn't want pink!! She chose a pale blue instead (afterall, blue is her favourite colour!) I just used the back, flat side of an ordinary dinner knife...and wasn't too precious about it being totally smooth, a bit of texture adds to the design...don't you think!?

Step 4 - Now the fun part - decorating it!

Using a piping bag, I piped 4 'blobs' of white butter creamas equally spaced as I could on either side...I then used the buttercream as 'glue' to stick Galaxy Counters on as a button effect.

Step 5 - The handle was then attached...it's a large Tootsie Roll that I had to search for online, I got mine from here...
Before I could attach it, I had to bend it and hod it in that position for a while (I used to baked Bean tins!! One either side to push it into shape!). To attach, I just gently pressed it into the cake.

Step 6 - The flowers...These are very cleverly made from marshmallows that are cut across the top in slices! They get very sticky, so be careful not to stick yourself up! They are also attached using the Vanilla Buttercream, and another Galaxy Counter was used as the center of each flower.

The final product of a few hours labour...

Step 7 - Repeat step 6 on the other side of the handle!





Step 8 - Finishing off! I just piped the name and a message on the tray I was using in place of a cake board...You could tweak it to suit the occasion really easily...The overall effect was fantastic...when it was brought to the table at theparty there were lots af gasps!!!...and it tasted pretty good too!!!





All in all a rather successful cake!!