As well as being an amazing 5th grade teacher, and competitive ballroom dancer, Ms Soccodato also trains dogs so I had several options when it came to creating her birthday cake.
Buster won – he’s a gorgeous Shih-Poo, (shih-tzu poodle mix), and this cake doesn’t do him justice!
The cake itself is a vanilla-chocolate marbled victoria sponge, sandwiched with buttercream and carved to shape.
She and her class loved it!
Aron’s request for a biohazard warning sign seemed like a wonderfully fitting choice for a tenth birthday cake, given kids’ often cavalier attitude to hygiene!
It was simple to make and gave us the chance to discuss how to work out the lengths of the sides of an equilateral triangle if one knew how tall it could be (the width of the cake carrier).
I was able to get a really toxic background colour by mixing in a little green with the yellow. The symbol itself, I cut out of home-made black fondant using improvised cutters (random kitchen items) of the appropriate diameter, offsetting them to get the narrow/wide shape, then cutting in the gaps once it was in situ.
The irony of the image was probably lost on the children (though not the grown-ups) and it certainly didn’t stop anyone from eating it, as you can see!
The warning didn’t seem to put them off!
Another first birthday cake, this is a farmyard scene with dutch barn (complete with rooster on the roof), grain silo, sheep, ducks in a duckpond, and pigs in the mud, all surrounded by a picket fence.It was great fun to make, especially the little piggies’ curly tales and the ducks’ beaks.The cake itself was a new departure – carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting.
A very different texture from my usual victoria sponge, it had less structural integrity which presented some interesting construction challenges – which is why the silo seems to be buckling a little at the base.
It looked and tasted great, and was devoured with enthusiasm by kids and adults alike.
I was asked to create a nautical themed cake with a red, white and blue colour palette, for a one year old little boy’s birthday. I think I rose to the challenge!
This cake is victoria sponge, experimentally sandwiched with dulce de leche instead of buttercream, at the mother’s suggestion – which seemed to work really well.
On the top, is a lighthouse with the baby’s name, and a blue whale surfacing. Fondant sail boats ride fondant waves around the top layer, and anchors and life preserving rings decorate the bottom one.
The lighthouse was simply several small rounds of cake piled up and wrapped in fondant, with a blue fondant “light” at the top. Smaller cookie cutters were perfect for the life preserving rings, which I cut from cream-coloured fondant and decorated with blue and red strips.
The anchors were made from white chocolate tinted grey with food colouring, and the blue whale, on breaking waves of white and blue fondant, was made from more white chocolate – this time tinted blue.
Parents and party guests loved the final result, as did I.
Here is Shaggy, our guinea pig, reproduced in Victoria sponge cake and buttercream frosting.
With Shaggy by my side, I built up layers of cake sandwiched with vanilla buttercream, then carved it to shape, forming his paws with extra frosting and adding details like eyes and claws with coloured royal icing. Texture was added using the tines of a fork.
My boys thought it was a very fine representation, it tasted great, and 3G devoured it with gusto!
Vegan cakes are no longer quite as daunting!
This ultra-yummy 10th birthday cake was based around almond meal, gram flour, and vegan margarine, using vegetable powders like beetroot and spinach for colouring.
As you can see from the photo, it went down very well!
Just to show I do make regular cakes too, here is one of our favourites, made from a Mary Berry recipe book given to me many years ago by a close friend’s mum.
A great cake to produce when American friends tell me they don’t like fruitcake – immediate conversion!
It was a hard choice between Mickey Mouse and a zombie cake.
Mickey seemed slightly more suitable for a three year old’s birthday party. Maybe we’ll get to have the zombie next year!
I made a 9″ round chocolate sponge and a rectangular one from which I cut two smaller circles, slicing them all in half and sandwiching them with vanilla butter cream. I arranged these on the cake tray into the famous Mickey Mouse silhouette, trimming to shape around his chin, and used a clean spirit level to ensure flatness.
I used royal icing coloured black to cover the ears, sides of the cake, and around his face, using a piping nozzle to add nose, eyes and other outline details. When these were dry, I coloured in the whites of his eyes and the red of his tongue. Finally, I used very thin royal icing to fill in his face in a peachy-pinky colour, letting it run out to the edges of the space.
Very cool!
We wanted something simple but striking to welcome Daddy back from a trip away. Pink meringues fit the bill!
The boys and I whipped up some egg whites and sugar, adding red food colouring until we had a suitably Valentine-ish pink. Then we piped large hearts onto teflon paper using a large piping nozzle and baked them in a cool oven.
After letting them cool in the oven, we ate them piled with whipped cream and fresh berries. Yummy!