Well....sorry I have been away for quite a while. It's just been one thing after another! We had Z's 2nd Birthday party...which had to be postponed because we all got a tummy bug but was still a roaring success, but I will have to post about that later. I have heaps of photos to share!
This post is about the cake that I made for the night of Z's 2nd Birthday night. The theme for his party was construction and this was also so the night of his party...with the cake at least! So I am going to share with you how I iced the image on the top of the cake. You could do this with any image you choose, but of course, ours was Bob the Builder. You can download the template here. You may need to resize it to suit the shape of your cake.
Once you have downloaded the image, you should get something similar to that above. You then need to cut it out into the 2 main sections - the hat and the face - I didn't worry about the hair as that was just a nearly straight line and didn't feel that I needed a guide.
Once you have the sections cut out, place them all on the cake so that you can make sure that there is room for the entire image. Once you are happy with placement, remove every section EXCEPT for the face (see below).
Take a very sharp and pointy knife or a skewer and make a line around the shape so that you can see it in the icing. When you take off the piece of paper, it should look similar to the line I have outlined below
It is now time to make your icing! I used pure icing sugar, something I always do, as it seems to keep its shape better that the soft icing sugar. You need to make the icing fairly thick so that it doesn't ooze out of your piping bag. Now take the piping bag with a narrow tip and fill with icing. Pipe a line along the line that you made in the icing with the knife/skewer, then continue making more and more lines inside that initial line to fill the face section. Often the lines will merge together, but if not you may need to brush over the icing with a butter knife or spatula to even it out.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this. Z kept getting out of bed and interrupting me so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Repeat this process for the hat and the hair, marking the shape with a knife or skewer and then filling with the appropriate coloured icing in a narrow nozzled piping bag. Before you put away the yellow icing, put a star/flower tip onto the piping bag and pipe stars around the outside of the cake. I feel that this just finishes off the cake and helps it to stand out from the plate.
Once I had finished icing the hat, face and hair, I took a tube of black 'Queen' writing icing that I purchased at the supermarket to mark all of the lines, the nose, eyes, mouth and ears.
You should end up with something similar to the above.
Add some candles and you're good to go!
I was quite impressed. Z knew exactly who the picture was of on the cake. It has inspired me to do something like this again. I wonder who his favourite will be next year?
Anyway, Happy 2nd Birthday Z! We love you very much!
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