My family and other animals

I first started this blog in January 2010, and my first post was shortly after the birth of my baby boy R. Fast forward one year and he is magically one and my little Miss B is almost 3.

Which means that birthday cakes were called for!

My story every year is the same – plan for ages, prepare for a short time, leave it all to the last minute and finish it all off in a mad panic. True to form, I had decided in early January that Mr R’s cake was to be a wombat. The Australian Women’s Weekly Kids’ Party Cakes book had one called “Wobbly Wombat”, which was constructed of three separate cakes – a pudding steamer, a round cake and a dolly varden cake. I see now that the name was a warning. The three cakes were to be stuck together (with jam! Jam, I tell you!) and propped up on four halved muffins, which became the feet. The wombat was then to be coated in fluffy buttercream.

Cut to the day of the party, which was to be at a local park. In the sun. I tried to stick the cakes together with jam and they laughed at me before falling rapidly apart. I upped the ante and stuck them together with chocolate. They humoured me for a while then fell apart again. I then got serious and stuck them together with more chocolate and a big skewer which went basically from the wombat’s bottom to his nose. Harsh, but necessary. Thus connected, the wombat was then thickly covered with chocolate buttercream and decorated.

All was fine until we arrived at the park and my husband, who was transporting the cake, said, “I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”. Sure enough, the wombat body had come apart in the middle, leading to an icing crevasse. We decided it would be an injured wombat and carried on with the party. Unfortunately, by the time the cake cutting time came, the lovely Australian sun had done it’s part, and the wombat was a wombat no more. He was more a brown, chocolatey puddle. A party guest said to me with big eyes, “wow, I’ve never seen a cake like that before!”. I said, “no, and I’m sure you won’t see another one”.

I must warn you, the next image may disturb younger viewers.

Ah, you have to laugh, right?

Following that, a fabulous baking friend sent me a recipe for high humidity icing. I had no idea that such a thing existed. She also recommended using ready made icing, which was more resilient than buttercream. She’s a clever girl that one. Here are the cakes SHE made for Mr R’s birthday!

She also made BEAUTIFUL cupcakes for Miss B’s birthday – thank you!

After the wombat, I was scared and determined in equal measure. Buttercream was definitely out. I decided to make a devil’s food cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, which is one of the most fantastic cake books I have come across (thanks Lemonpi for telling me about it). And since Miss B is very much into pink and ballet at the moment, I decided it was going to be a princess. We’ll work on the gender stereotype thing later, ok?

So here she is:

And in action:

Edited to add – there was an unfortunate casualty from the princess cake, however…I guess that’s the price to pay for having legs disproportionately tall and thin compared to the rest of your body!

Suggestions welcomed for next year, with the obvious rider that I won’t actually start them until the night before!

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