A car, tacos and a hummingbird

I'm back with this year's birthday cake offerings for the nephews: a car for the 17 year old learner driver, jumbo sized tacos for the food-obsessed middle nephew and a fruity hummingbird cake for the youngest. 

I was particularly pleased with the taco cake. It was so effective and surprisingly simple to construct: four round sponges (two plain, two chocolate) cut in half and stacked on their sides. The outer sponges were covered in fondant whereas the chocolate ones were covered with chocolate butter icing with blitzed bourbon (chocolate) biscuits pressed on top to resemble a beef mince filling. Green butter icing was piped on top for lettuce, red fondant cut into cubes for diced tomatoes/chillies, grated orange fondant for cheese and plain butter icing piped for a blob of sour cream.

I was a bit concerned that a grey Toyota Yaris (what eldest nephew is learning to drive in) would look ridiculously boring as a cake but I think it had sufficient charm. Incorporating the L plate in his name made a fun touch.

I was really surprised youngest nephew requested a "normal" cake this year as opposed to the usual fun, fondant affair but he wanted the same cake I had baked for his mum's birthday (same cake I made for her last year.) It certainly made my life a lot easier as fondant work takes ages and can feel stressful but I couldn't help but feel a little sad that this potentially marks the end of the fun, birthday cake-making era for the boys.

However I didn't let youngest nephew go completely fondant free as I had recently bought fondant alphabet cutters and was determined to use them. I should have bought these years ago! I thought the pack only contained letters so hand cut the "13" but noticed afterwards that there were numbers at the bottom of the box. DOH! I'll know for next time.

rugby ball birthday cake

I'm back with the next installment of "weird things I end up making as cakes for my nephews' birthdays." Last year for middle nephew it was rolling individual grains of rice from fondant for a curry themed cake and this year it was defying the laws of gravity with a rugby ball cake standing on its end. As you do.

After my usual Google images research I made the lower half of the "ball" as a marshmallow rice Krispies no bake for a solid lower structure. I'm still new to this common baking technique so didn't have full faith it would support the cake, but it did the job brilliantly.

For the cake I used a standard Victoria sponge mix baked in 6" round cake pans. Once sandwiched together with butter icing and jam (rhubarb jam, obviously courtesy of my rhubarb empire) I carved it into a dome. I even made a bonus mini "14" cake with the spare sponges I ended up not needing for the main cake. 

For the rice krispie lower half I pressed the mixture into a cereal bowl for a mould as the diameter more or less matched the cake tins. I also pressed some of the mix into one of the tins for a layer of extra height as I wasn't convinced the bowl was deep enough. This is the bake mid construction:

I have no idea why this photo uploaded sideways, sorry!

The flat bottom of the bowl created a solid base for the structure and I figured as I was intending to present the ball cake sitting on a kicking tee (also made from the rice Krispies mixture) it would look like it was sitting in the tee rather than a ball with a chopped off bottom.

I have to admit that despite my best efforts the kicking tee was not completely level and immediately after I finished taking my photos the cake toppled off the "tee", rolled off the worktop and onto the floor! It was one of those dramatic, slow motion, "noooooo" moments as I couldn't get to it in time to catch it. . . 

Somewhat miraculously the cake landed with a thud, unharmed?! How it stayed in one piece is beyond me, it barely even marked the fondant. I am both stunned and grateful that it didn't splat onto the floor in pieces minutes before leaving the house for the birthday party.

The fondant isn't my finest work as it tore as soon as I draped it over the cake but I patched it up the best I could and moved on with my life. In hindsight I probably should have applied the fondant in sections (like a rugby ball skin, I guess!) as the joins would have been covered by the coloured bands but I'm happy with the overall look I achieved.

The birthday boy was suitably impressed, mostly that it was a Scottish ball (which was an important detail) and the cake tasted good. It's definitely one of the most interesting cake cross section photos I've taken.

In the interest of not excluding eldest nephew's cake from earlier in the year, I made a UFC belt birthday cake. He was thoroughly delighted with it too. 

It amuses me that even at 14 and 16 they still want to continue the tradition of silly birthday cakes from their daft aunty. They're not too cool for me yet!

world flags cake

I interrupt the Adventures with Rhubarb series with a flag cake I made for my youngest nephew's birthday last month. 

He's absolutely obsessed with flags so requested a flag themed cake, the only specification being the inclusion of the Scottish flag. I was admittedly relieved the cake wasn't going to be a complicated sculptural affair, "just" flags stuck on a standard shaped cake.

As usual I underestimated the length of time it would take to roll and cut out all the different fondant colours for making all the flags. I baked the cake (a standard Victoria sponge) the night before, thinking I would easily finish it the following morning. I started shortly after 9am and got my conveyor belt assembly station set up. . . And was finished by 2.45pm. You'd think I'd learn from over 10 years experience of making my nephews' birthday cakes that fondant is fiddly and ALWAYS TAKES LONGER THAN I THINK.

I do find it funny the amount of time I spend making random things for my nephews' birthday cakes. In March it was hand rolling fondant rice grains, in May it was cutting out 60 flags. 64 if you also include the paper ones on cocktail sticks.

I largely only made flags which didn't have overly complicated details. (So no American flag, sorry Americans.) However I also purchased some writing icing pens which came in handy for adding extra colour within crosses or drawing a couple of small central motifs.

I got to eat Canada and Seychelles. Do not ask me to name any more flags as I've already forgotten most of them!

Needless to say the cake was a raging success and the birthday boy had fun identifying all the flags. For a fairly simple idea it made an effective, colourful cake.