DD's 5th Birthday Cake - Ideas Please!

[Taffeta]

OK, the last few years I have got away with big square cakes covered in poink sugarpaste and either different hues of pink jellbeans or last year, lollipops and pink feathers, but this year DD has upped the ante.

She's talking fairies, unicorns n all that er stuff. I'm thinking maybe a 2 tier cake, with some form of decorations made from sugarpaste. Or a fairy toadstool or something. Pyrex dishes and things scare me though. I'm a good cake baker, but am known for taste over presentation.

I'm not known for my dextrous fingers, but if push came to shove if there was a great online tutorial I might be OK. I have an amazing local cake supplies shop, so can get the stuff I need, but could really do with some tips, esp:

• What websites would you recommend for both ideas and in depth details of how to make the decorations?
• Any links or suggestions of actual cakes that wouldn't be either too basic or too much of a stretch?

I guess what I don't want is a standard cake with a few figures I've bought on the top, but nor do I want to be crafting sugarpaste ickle wickle thingies past midenight, either.

Help really, really appreciated! Its for about 3 weeks time.

Could you make lots of individual fairy cakes, cover them in different colour icing and then get the children to decorate them themselves as their own individual toadstool?
Let me have a think!

www.parenting.com/article/how-to-make-a-unicorn-birthday-cake

I am rubbish at fairy cakes! I am much better at big cakes.

Thanks for the unicorn head. A leedle bit scary?

Cheers Beer!

You caught me outside

Thanks Beer

The cakes I've made for dds have been

Hello Kitty cake - jelly beans for eyes, nose, toothpicks for whiskers, bow made out of sweets

Beauty and the Beast cake - big yellow heart covered in roses made out of fruit winders with belle and beast figures on

Princess cake - cake is big skirt, with doll stuck in, skirt decorated with sweets.

The Hello Kitty cake is on my profile (ignore the picture of the cake disaster!)

Thanks Beer, thats much more up my alley. Useful to know how to secure turrets to bases etc, I'm rubbish at all that techincal stuff.

cakecentral.com/gallery/2025136 This cake is quite easy to make. Butter cream icing waterfall, rolled icing for the grass and fiugres also made from ready to roll icing.

Wow hazey - it looks lovely! But I am a bit scared of disembodied heads (see unicorn above). What happened with the one underneath?!

I did consider a princess one with a dolly in, but have heard they are a pig to cut, is this true?

And, if I'm really honest, I would probably rather she had fairies than princesses, not that I would seek to influence her ha ha.

But oh what would I do with the remnants of swiss roll?

Thanks going - I really like the idea of having the second tier to one side as in that cake.

Thankyou, I am ashamed to admit that that is the only photo I have of dds 5th birthday. I was so pleased with how it came out!

The cake underneath was supposed to be Nigella's damp chocolate cake, I haven't got clue what went wrong, it exploded like a volcano! Amazingly it tasted lovely chopped up into icecream.

The doll one, was actually a tinkerbell doll (I had high ideals, but now the house is overrun with princess crap). I used a round cake for the bottom and a cake cooked in a pyrex dish for the top bit of the skirt. When it came to cutting the cake for party bags, I sliced the top section off and just chopped up the bottom, if that makes sense.

Oooh Pyrex dish. How does that all work then? What recipe and measurements do you use? Presumably you just grease it like a cake tin?

I get the high ideals bit. I had a DS first and was very of all the pink crap people with DDs had. Then I had one of my very own, my own girly girl A bit like DS was never going to be into football. (He couldn't be crazier about it if he tried).I fully expect him to be a vicar when he grows up as DH and I are rampant atheists.