BIG cake update II

Well this year I didn't shout it to the world, I suspect because I felt there were many flaws in my work that I couldn't come to terms with. But I keep going back and looking at the cake we created this year for my son's second birthday. And the more I look at it, the more I like it.

We rented the "2" shaped tin from a local cake decorating shop. We made the butter cake a week in advance and put it in the freezer. It needed to sit on a board until it was frozen because the neck of the two was so fragile. It was heaps of fun cutting the cake through the middle to fill it with white chocolate ganache, but worth it as it looked a picture when it was sliced.

My husband appointed himself maker of the racing cars - which was just as well as he did a brilliant job of it. I used my texture mat for fondant for the first time, and had to have two goes to get the imprint right. Note to anybody using a texture mat, use firm pressure when you roll, and only roll once!

It took quite a lot of work to get the white fondant to a suitable grey colour. Next time I'd probably buy pre-coloured black fondant and add white to take it back to grey, rather than use black food colouring to get from white to grey. It was just messy and took a really long time to get the colour right.

I wasn't going to put my son's name on the cake, but I felt it needed a colour lift. I'd made the orange stars and I had some orange pastilage left over, so I cut the letters out and was delighted when they fitted perfectly along the bottom of the "2".

On the day I was thrilled to see many little hands reaching out to snatch decorations from the cake before we'd even finished singing happy birthday! We made truck-shaped ginger bread biscuits decorated with either pink or blue icing as take home gifts for our party guests. And of course there was loads of cake leftover to share with colleagues at work the next day.

In all, this cake fed about 60 people. I can't wait to see what my son takes an interest in this coming year, so I can start dreaming up his next birthday cake!

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