Kelly Kitty mk.2 (January 17, 2010)

Well that time of year rolled around again (my daughter's birthday) and just as her tastes change, so do the demands on the cake - this year it had to be elegant, whilst also retaining an element of fun. So as you can see, it's all about Kitty nowadays - the days of Barney, Cinderella, Arial and High School Musical are well behind us now as (dare I say it) my baby's growing up.

So armed with a very specific brief ("it has to be Hello Kitty" and "it has to be grown up", along with a little "it must have sparkly bits") we set about working on the general design. After lots of internet-based research (ie: what ideas can we steal from other people), we came up with two cakes that we loved: the first was far too mature, but we loved the head on the top; whilst the second had the kind of decoration on the tiers that we were after, so the obvious answer was to combine the best elements from both.

The cake was our usual recipe, with two changes from our previous routines:

• the cakes were given a thick "crumb layer" of buttercream icing (rather than the usual jam coating) as an experiment to see if a crumb layer would help eliminate the ridges that usually appear in the regal icing when laid over the cake. I know that I have always been against this, but having tried it for myself I have to admit that I'm a convert - it's fantastic and it's only through this crumb layer that we managed to get the cakes so smooth; and
• the head was refrigerated before after carving the shape to stiffen it with the aim of making the carving easier (think carving a block of polystyrene rather than a block of sponge). In addition to this, each all of the tiers were refrigerated after applying the crumb layer, but before applying the regal icing to ensure that the cakes were stiff enough to prevent the formation of ridges in the icing. Again, I'm a convert - the concerns about the cake staying hard, even after it's been brought back to room temperature were completely unfounded - it tasted as good as usual.
  

The tiers were made using one 10 inch, one 8 inch and two 6 inch cakes. The two cakes making up the head, were each split and buttercreamed separately, before being brought together (separated by a thin cake board) and carved/iced. For some reason the 10 inch cake rose much more than the 8 inch cake, and with hindsight I think we should have baked another 8 inch so that the tiers were even heights, and despite our best efforts, we still have a ridge visible in the head (just above the eyes) so I'm going to have to work on that for the future - possibly a thicker crumb layer.

So now the decoration, in four parts:

• The head: The decorative elements on the head were all formed from the same icing that was used to cover the head. The nose was coloured first, whilst the eyes and whiskers were applied in white and then painted with black food colouring. The bow was formed from the same pink icing used to cover the middle tier, and then covered with edible sparkly bits;
• The flowers: These were formed from the white and pink icing that had been used to cover the cakes using a cutter that my wife had purchased for the occasion. They were then glued to the tiers using an edible decorating glue;
• The dots: One word - Smarties;
• The pink shiny balls between the first and second tiers: These were each glued in place by hand.

So yet another cake for our wonderful daughter.

Time taken to make this cake: 6 hours (excluding time spent in the fridge)

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.

It all started with a single cake (January 16, 2005)

Well, having had this blog for a month now, with no activity, I guess it's time to start adding things - our first cake seems like the best place to start.

It was a first birthday cake for our daughter. A jam sponge cake, decorated to match the tableware (plates, napkins, banners etc...).

This cake was completely experimental - there was nothing about this process that was familiar to us. We had never made a sponge cake before and had certainly never decorated one. The icing was purchased white and was coloured as required, with the addition of icing gel pens and sparkley bits to complete the pattern.

Time spent to make this cake: 6 hours.

One final note - note the creases in the icing on the sides of the cake - we just didnt know how to get ried of these. It was only after discovering the problem that we thought to ask the lady in our local cake shop for a few pointers. Watch the next few cakes to see how these vanished.