wiggy's penguin cake

this is wiggy's penguin cake. i don't know whatever possessed him to make such a request, but he did. and it had lots of black icing...an obscene amount. everytime i make a cake with black icing i find that i have to use masses of black food colouring to get it anywhere near black...and this is starting with really dark chocolate icing. all the other colours don't need anywhere near the same amount, and i'm thinking strong colours here...red...forest green....

involved

engine has a tendency to be sooky at times, and the day we had his party was no exception. never one to take that nonsense, i asked eddie to take wiggy and sly up to the local woollies and buy a bag of smarties.
the smarties served two purposes; i used them to lured engine away from his dad and to decorate his cake. i really believe in always having a more involved approach to cake making/decorating - it makes eveything more personal and memorable. never mind if you don't make the cake yourself, but if you can just do a little something, it's nice.
so, after i made and iced engine's cake, i left it quite plain. and i left it to him and his brothers and cousins to help adorn it. engine was quite absorbed and made sure the smarties didn't fall off the cake by pressing them deep into the cake. if he's too young to remember doing this, i'm sure there will be those who will remember...and remind him of how he added his personal touch to his birthday cake....and forgot about being clingy and sooky.

ack dack's first cake

today is acka dack's birthday, and it's hard to believe time has flown so quickly.

deprived

several years ago, mrs muntz was telling me that they would be going to the snow in july and i simply said, "oh, my poor deprived children have never seen snow, and i don't know when they ever will." she was very kind and invited us along, and we have been grateful ever since because there's nothing like it. we love it.

more recently, i have had the opportunity to make a barbie cake. when my children were little, i was very deprived. they weren't into barbies, so there were no barbie cakes to be made. until now, that is.
barbie cakes are actually quite a good cake to make - not only does the birthday girl get a cake, but a doll at the end of the party, as well.
now, all i need is the opportunity to make some cakes for boys......the wigs? are you reading this? hint, hint?

a pocket monster

this is a pocket monster. pocket monsters were at the height of their popularity in the 90s last century. from japan, they were more commonly known as pokemon. the most well known of the pokemons was a pocket monster called pikachu. let me introduce you to the pocket monster called pikachu:


this plush toy is miss k's, and because of its size, she chose to christen it king pikachu. my nephew, sly, had taken a liking to king pikachu all in time for his birthday, so you can guess what he wanted for his birthday cake. by the way, that's his precious little hand on the right.

so several weeks ago, i got a phone call from sly requesting a pikachu cake. an important part of making a novelty cake, for me, is working out what i'm going to base the cake on. at the very least i need a picture. my ideal is to have a line drawing which will translate into a cake easily. in the case of pikachu, i needed a colour picture so i could get his colours as well. this, i left to blutsie, sly's mum and my sister. that's the least she could do as far as i was concerned, since she wasn't making the cake. that sounds fair, eh? i think it's good to be involved even just a little with one's child's birthaday cake - it makes it more personal. anyway, after mucking around trying to get a line drawing of pikachu and getting his colours, i ended up copying the plush toy. plush toys aren't my favourite medium to copy, but in this case, it worked.

sly's pikachu cake