And then there were two (January 14, 2006)

Well, a year went by with little temptation and little opportunity, and the cake count remained at one. It was still a one-time event in our minds with no plans to repeat ourselves ... until our daughter's second birthday rolled around.

This cake was an experiment. For her previous birthday, we had created a cake that was (in our minds) quite simple - a jam sponge with icing and flat decorations. The real question for this cake was just how good were we with icing? Could we create childrens' tv characters that were recognisable to us and (more importantly) recognisable by our daughter. As before, we started with a jam sponge, and covered it with a layer of icing, and then went to work on the decoration. Instead of adding flat shapes and sparkly bits, the goal this time was to have the decoration standing out from the cake, almost like little toys placed on the cake. I cannot articulate just how much fun and frustration we had (in equal measures) trying to colour the icing and make the figures, and would recommend this to anyone - there really is nothing more therapeutic than pummeling an icing figure of an annoying purple dinosaur. :-)

Time to make this cake: 6 hours

One final note: The handbag, books, blocks and balls - It took so long to create the characters that we ran out of time - the blocks and balls etc filled the empty space and only took a few minutes to create.