_ _ _ _ _ _ _ PottsCrafty _ _ _ _ _

Joeys 4th Birthday Lightning McQueen

I'm not a baker and never have been. I don't actually enjoy cooking much at all, but sometimes I feel that I have to do it, like when my 3 year old really wants a Lightning McQueen cake for his birthday and I can't find one in the shops (of course, Tesco started stocking their version 3 months after he turned 4!)

I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing, having never made a proper cake before, so I asked a friend who does this stuff professionally http://www.jenscakery.co.uk/ and she gave me a few tips. Like using Trex to help with rolling out the fondant for instance. Which frankly was the hardest bit.

I decided to use rice paper for the decoration, and did this bit first.

See my gleaming bench in preparation! I started with a mould rather than constructing it myself (in hindsight I should have just constructed it myself and save the cost of hiring a mould) I don't even remember what recipe I used - I suspect I bought a ready made mix from the shop (again in hindsight - don't bother with that)

I then sliced off various bits of the cake to try and make it resemble lightning.

Guess what happened to the leftover cutoff bits (yum yum)

It was then covered in goo (courtesy of Betty Crocker)

And then the fondant (ready made red stuff) The trex was a great tip. It took many attempts though. I then smoothed it out all over.

The pretend birthday present at the rear is of course to keep up the spoiler which I didn't think would last until party time. Then time to stick on the numbers (with icing) and the other bits (used fondant)

All done.

Joey and Olly had a joint 4th Party. Thats him in the green stripey t-shirt. Olly is batman on the left.

The cakes were v. popular. Lightning didn't last so long!

Joey's 5th Birthday Luke Skywalker

Joey wanted a lego star wars theme for his 5th. So once more, I got my baking head on.

I decided to do some cupcakes for the party bags as well as his main cake. I dropped a bit of blue into the mixture to make them a woooo colour. Half of these had white cases and the other half black.

I did the tops in fondant as I'm not great with piping. I did some black, some white, some marbled, and rolled in some stars and crispy bits to pep them up.

The final cakes will have these Darth Vader and Storm Trooper plastic rings on top.

Cakes with icing on

Cake in one of the holders I made to protect it in the party bag. Has a Darth Vader ring on top.

I also tackled Luke Skywalker. This year, I used a bog standard chocolate cake recipe and square tins and cut to approx size. The propoprtions arent great but I didnt really care too much.