questions about buttercream icing

[smallpotato]

It's DD2's 1st birthday party on Saturday. My plan is to make a victoria sponge cake with jam and cream in the middle and buttercream icing. I've only actually made buttercream icing once before - earlier this week as a practice! It tasted ok on fairy cakes though very sickly sweet but I guess that's normal?

Will I be ok to make and ice the cake the night before? Or should I ice it on the day? Once iced, should it be kept in the fridge?

I've bought a tube of ready-made writing icing to put her name on and I've got a few edible butterfly and flower decorations, will that work on buttercream icing? I only decided on buttercream as every time I've tried to make normal icing it's been either too runny or lumpy and at least buttercream will cover up my mistakes in theory.

I've never made a kids birthday cake before, the only cake I ever make usually is Delia's carrot cake so I'm a bit nervous!

It'll be fine, if you ice it the night before. Try adding either cocoa powder or some lemon juice, to take the sickliness away from it.

it will be lovely.

BUT if you're up for a cheat I suggest a tub of betty crockers vanilla icing, i use this all the time on my cakes, cupcakes etc and it tastes yum and goes on a dream. stir through food colouring as required. not cheap but when it comes to b'days i'm up for cutting a few corners!

Are you having double cream inside aswell as butter cream on top? I always use buttercream for both or double cream for both. Not sure if a combination would work.

You can do it the night before and it will keep well, I don't keep mine in the fridge if it's done with buttercream although i'm not 100% that's technically correct! The sweets will be fine on top, my ds asled for a "sweetie cake" last year and I basically covered all the buttercream with pick and mix.

Good luck!

hmm, would it work with double cream on the top? For DH's birthday cake the other week I did a sponge (my first!) with strawberries and whipped cream in the middle and whipped cream spread on the top with strawberries dotted around. It was yummy! But I figured I'd need some kind of icing if I want to do writing on it?

So in that case should I do buttercream for both? I was just worried it might be a bit too sickly and too much sugar for a houseful of toddlers (and it looks like it's going to rain so can't even shove them out in the garden to run off their energy )

You can ice writing on top of whipped cream. My MIL does a really nice sponge with cream and strawberries for baptisms (lots of GCs) which she ices names/ dates etc. It's looked and tasted really good the 7 times I've seen it...

practice the writing icing first on a sheet of greaseproof paper....

homemade butter cream will keep covered in the fridge for a week,or it can be frozen.
regarding the sweet taste i think it's pretty normal for some adults to find it sickly as let's face it our tastes change with age,but i wouldn't be overly concerned unless i was given a whopping great slice!