In the Night Garden (August 9, 2009)

So this was another first for us - we had never done a proper tiered cake before, and our third child's second birthday was the ideal excuse - as you can probably guess, he's a bit obsessed with the childrens' television programme "In The Night Garden".

We started with three round cakes of different sizes (6, 9 & 12 inches) which were buttercreamed in the middle and then covered in a single layer of coloured icing. They were then placed on top of each other and a small amount of purple buttercream (left over from the sandwich filling from the cakes) was added round the edge of the top and middle tiers to cover any imperfections.

So what about the figures and other bits?

The Ninky-Nonk (the train on the bottom tier) was made using flat icing, coloured and cut as required, and then glued to the side of the cake. We decided not to try to model this, but to go for a simple solution, and to put the effort into the characters;

All of the figures were modelled using coloured regal icing, which proved to be more of a problem than ever before as the weight of the icing pulled the arms down and made the characters sag (hence the cocktail sticks under the arms - although these were removed at the last minute).

• Igglepiggle & Upsy Daisy (the two lower characters holding hands) were close to what we wanted, but somehow neither of them quite hit the mark - I still cannot put my finger on what is wrong with Igglepiggle, but Upsy Daisy was just too chunky - she is supposed to be a female character with a love of dancing, but somehow just ends up looking like an olympic shot-putter;
• Makka Pakka (the beige character towards the top) was made in the same way, but didn't suffer from the same sag as the others due to his size. He is, quite possibly, the best character we've ever made, and surprisingly took the least amount of time - possibly because we got him right, first time.

The Pinky-Ponk (the airship at the top of the cake) was a compromise. We had wanted to create a 3d airship, but the weight of the icing required was threatening to collapse on itself, and tried to sink into the top tier at one stage. The only choice was a 2d attempt, or to abandon the idea altogether.

Time taken to make this cake: 5 hours

One final note: We hadn't made a tiered cake before, so we made two fundamental mistakes: 1. we didn't have each tier on it's own base - the moisture from each of the top two layers made the icing on top of the bottom layers very sticky; and 2. we didn't use any support for the top tiers, so there was a little bit of settling as the tiers were added. Two very simple mistakes, easily corrected for future cakes. Lesson learned.