Cakey Catchup

Well as I was rushed off my feet before xmas, poor Phil did get a double cake (as the previous year i'd made his late and he's never stopped going on about it since). However the icing wasn't fantastic as I had ran out of roll-out fondant type. He was quite amused by the Mr Grumpy character.....despite imitating said character for most of the day. It was a tasty cake and did quickly appear smaller everytime I walked by it. I think everyone must have been taking sneaky slivers of it as they walked past until eventually it was gone!

This is Amy's chocolate hello kitty cake, from her birthday in January! I'd been asked in advance to make her cake - its a bit of a tradition that I make my friend's little ones their birthday cake. She was into princesses so I was looking forward to attempting a fairytale castle. But apparently since Christmas she'd become smitten with all things "Hello Kitty". I didn't have a round tin large enough to do a decent kitty face so I sneakily used a shallow roasting dish to make a big rectangular cake. Chocolate, sandwiched together with chocolate buttercream and chocolate spread of course! I had made it rather massive as was told it was for her party containing 20 children plus any adults/parents. However it was a joint birthday with her little friend Sam who also was having a cake of his own. There was plenty to go round and everyone loved it. It did rather eclipse the extra special M&S range "football shirt" one her little friend had but it made me feel secretly smug. 

With the leftover cake mix I made some cupcakes and put some little pink & white wafer flowers on them and some percy pigs (bits of leftover pink themed toppings I had in my little tupperwear box of decorations). I even had a go at piping the buttercream, it wasn't as successful as i'd hoped (hence the rather big piggy shapes hiding it). But they were tasty and mostly grabbed by the parents before the actual birthday cake was cut!

Lastly my Dad's cake......its not a brilliant picture as its off my phone and I think the tin foil was too much for the dinky flash to cope with. He's diabetic so isnt' supposed to eat a lot of sweet things (not that it stops him mind). So I made him a plain sponge and secretly halved the amount of sugar, sweetened it up by adding a few spoonfuls of diet cola to the cake batter and then mixed the icing with some diet cola to add a bit of flavour. Apparently he loves the cake but isn't so interested in the cola bottles on the top and keeps picking them off and feeding them to the dog!!! Charming. I was trying to get hold of beer bottle sweeties cos he's a bit of a beer monster but no joy. Plenty of weird and wonderful milkbottle sweets (including blue raspberry milkshake flavour) but no beer ones. I even went to the wholesaler and wandered down the sweetie aisles drooling looking for a box.

Ohh and I nearly forgot my sister in law Emma's (27th) this again was all chocolate cos she's a bit of a choco-holic, I was a bit gutted the glitter icing ran, i'd made it really intricate patterned and everything! Booo.

Next birthdy is my friend Chelle who hasn't had a "Debbie" cake since her 17th Birthday (quite a while ago now) it was a saxophone! So I'm going to have to get my thinking cap on for her birthday at the start of March. Hmmm I'm thinking along the lines of a surfer...complete with surfboard.