Cackhanded cake decorator needs foolproof advice please!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

My (adult) daughter and I have volunteered to make cakes for our local junior parkrun's birthday celebrations. We are both fairly good at making cakes but not much good at icing! It would be really nice to be able to put the parkrun logo on the top (two images attached, I will merge them to create the picture we would like). Does anybody have any advice for how we should go about it? I've looked at edible cake toppers and that would be one easy way out of this, but I'd like at least to consider doing something ourselves. It would have to be fairly foolproof.

Cakes: there will be at least 100 children and a lot of adults, so we will need a lot of cake. We were thinking about making one big cake (I think it would have to be a traybake) and a lot of plain fairy cakes with glace icing as a vehicle for sprinkles and so forth. In that case we'd put the parkrun picture on the big cake. We haven't decided what flavour to make the big cake. One idea is chocolate because most people like that. Another is carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, which we like and know how to do, and which would make a good background for the picture. We need to avoid nuts in case of allergies.

All advice warmly welcomed! Thanks.

For that many cakes is just do an edible image, that's what I'd do for corporate cakes. Www.Eatmyphoto.co.uk

You could pipe or cut out fondant for the logo but would be so time consuming and difficult to get them all exact.

Otherwise you could create a template. I'd print the logo maybe 8x on an A4 sheet of parchment paper, and cut it out so you're left with 8'logos on one sheet. Roll out sugarpaste quite thin. Lay template over, stick down with very small amount of vegetable fat (eg Trex). Scrape royal icing or buttercream over the template, very thin layer. Remove template. Leave to dry. Cut out each logo using a round cutter, and put that on your cupcake. Repeat 12.5 times to make 100 toppers!

Sorry it's www.eatyourphoto.co.uk, not my!

Thanks so much, Bendydick! [sentence no. 13144 I would never have expected to write before the internet came along]. Just reading that bit about the template has tipped the balance - edible topper it is, I think!

As a one off, for the big cake, I'd probably cut the shapes out of sugar paste for the picture and put it together like a jigsaw puzzle- it's nice and simple. Then pick a couple of the elements- say, a leaf and a bird - to decorate the fairy cakes.

My technique is make the cakes so scrummy nobody cares they look like a car crash.
Oh an i claim my 5 year old helped decorate them.

That design would be very easy to create on an oblong cake. Cover it in white fondant initially, then add the green/orange/brown. Print out the picture a few times and and cut out the pieces. Lay them onto the rolled out fondant and cut out the fondant shapes. Use edible glue to stick them onto the white fondant.

For the writing, print the logo backwards on the printer (you'll see a 'reverse print' option) and carefully trace over the top of the letters with a soft Hb pencil until completely covered. Then, place the paper face down on the cake where you want the writing to be. Gently scribble over the paper with the pencil. The writing will be transferred onto the surface of the cake. Now you can use icing to pipe over the pencil marks and it will be in the font you used.

What about doing cupcakes? You say there is 100 children and lots of adults. You could do 100 cupcakes, do 50 chocolate with chocolate buttercream, and 50 vanilla with vanilla buttercream (coloured the lime green from the logo). Use a closed or open star tip when icing the cupcakes, this gives a lovely rose effect, and with the buttercream coloured the same as a couple of the colours from the logo it will all tie in together.

Then you could do a traybake (carrot cake, coffee cake, lemon - what ever you like) with a printed edible logo?

I think if it's not something you've done a lot of before, make it as easy as you possibly can. Cupcakes are easy, the decoration is very forgiving for beginners, mistakes don't notice as much as they do on big cakes!