Saturday, November 26, 2011

badger's birthday cake shenanigans

The key to making children's birthday cakes is resourcefulness. You inevitably end up making the cake very late at night. And something always goes wrong. I was endeavouring to make 'Wally the Whale' from The Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Cookbook. You can find other more successful attempts here and here. But needless to say, Badger's cake does not bear much of a resemblance.

The underlying cake structure for Wally the Whale is a very large rectangle. I was endeavouring to make sure that my cake was nice and flat so left it in the oven to slowly cool overnight. Unfortunately I forgot that I tried the same thing last year and that it's very hard to get a cake out of a tin the next morning. It's best to do it sooner rather than later.

So unfortunately a vertical half of the cake was all that came out intact. Here's the detritus of what was left behind.



Not to worry though because one long strip of cake is all that's needed to make a one which was all that was required in Badger's case. The artist husband helped to shape the one (which I think looks like the ones in channel 11) although Giggi the 4yo did think it looked like a 7. We also managed to find pretty special looking chocolate tools, so all of a sudden we have a Bob the Builder cake - the yellow of the icing didn't quite come out in the photo. A few m&ms and hey presto we have a cake that looks like we made a bit of an effort although it doesn't much resemble the initial inspiration. Never mind.




It all looks pretty spesh once you add a candle....

4 comments:

  1. The cake still looks great Lou, and very impressed you found chocolate tools at the last minute! Go Bob. The whale was just not meant to be. : ) Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks Sarah, Badger certainly didn't mind as long as we were singing. It was Giggi I was more worried might be disappointed as he had been poring over the cake book all week. But he was fine :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think your cake looks fabulous Louisa. Our cake was to be a whale, then Bob, then a whale again...and I laughed when you mentioned it being a late-night endeavour....exactly what it always is in our house!!!

    Best wishes...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Sam! The key is to always have a back up plan I suppose. We have another birthday coming up this week. We're trying for a dinosaur cake. But we'll have to see...

    ReplyDelete