trying to make a bday cake -anyone help?!

[Hayls]

Can anyone help me make a birthday cake for my dd, who will be one in a couple of weeks? I know i could buy one really easily but when I mused that I might like to buy one my family sniggered and scoffed so now I'm determined!

I think I can make the cake itself OK but anyone with a basic sponge recipe would be much appreciated. It's the topping I'm more concerned with. She loves (well I do) Winnie the Pooh and I'd like to make a Pooh figure for the top as well as some little bits like butterflies and flowers. Problem is I have no idea where to start and I now can't ask anyone in RL for advice! I know I'm probably being a bit over ambitious but I'm so keen to give it a go, I've got some spare time to do it in.

Can you please help me? I just want her 1st birthday to be perfect even if she won't remember it.

Oh and it needs to feed at least 15.
Tried asking Big Cook and Little Cook but they wer too busy peering through their keyhole

You need the Cadbury woman for this one - she makes grrrrrreat cakes! (I can vouch as she made ds2's Baptism cake) Actually, ds2 has his first birthday this week, but I'm hopefully going to have time to attempt one myself, so Cadders, if you're around with a good recipe, I'd be grateful too.

If you cake making shop or department and have a look at the bits and pieces it shoud help a lot. Winnie is red and yellow, you could do with marzipan. But they sell loads and loads of fab stuff that will give you ideas. I did blue sparkly cake with penguin for ds. The actual cake was cr=p I had to make 3 and stack them as every one came out crooked. But the topping was fab !

A good basic sponge that I use for all my children's cakes is 6,6, 6 and 3. 6oz flour, 6oz butter/marg, 6 oz sugar and 3 eggs. A tsp baking powder and you're away. I add a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder to make it a chocolate cake. To ice I melt a bar of chocolate, mix in a little oil and pour over cake. Looks and tastes gorgeous. Hth

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Our local cake shop hires moulds and provides recipes for sponges to fill them. Ours does Winnie The Pooh. Do you have one near you - craft shops sometimes do them as well.

I'm hopeless at this stuff but my bf has made loads of fantastic cakes for her kids. She quite often uses swiss rolls (either flavour) and cuts them up to make things, trains, cars, allsorts. Then she makes icing and covers them over then add decorations. The end result is amazing.

A chocolate hedgehog is easy. I have 2 recipes. One from a Cadbury Novelty cake book and the other is in one of the kids cooking bookds (Iif i can find it) but both similar. Choc cake made ikn pudding basin, choc buttercream & choc buttons or almond flakes for quills. Can get you details if you want.

pooh cake decorations here

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cakecraft.co.uk .. they will have a tin and probably little winnie the pooh figures .. you can hire / buy the tin

cakecraft.co.uk .. they will have a tin and probably little winnie the pooh figures .. you can hire / buy the tin

pooh bear and tigger tins for hire here

fabulous lovely pooh bear characters for the top too

For dd's 1st I made a plain round cake with butter icing in middle and used rolled fondant icing over a layer of butter icing to cover. Then made a template figure of WTP by tracing a picture and used it to cut him out of coloured fondant adding a red piece for his shirt. Added different coloured balloons for him to hold and used drawing icing to decorate and put features on. Finally put a wide ribbon around the edge to tidy it up.

You can buy fondant icing in lumps or ready rolled in the supermarket and colour with food colouring.

Alternatively you could get some small plastic figures of WTP and friends and make a greenish cake for them to sit on. You could make Eeyore's house for example out of chocolate fingers, or have a blue river out of butter icing with a bridge for Poohsticks, if you want to look more creative !

hth

if you get some plactic figures to put on cake you can get some coconut and green food colouring pop in a bag and shake hey presto grass,
looks great too

You can buy ready to roll icing in any supermarket now. You can also get it in different colours but if you want to cover a big cake it's probably not enough - you can use food colouring to dye the white stuff (but see if you can get the concentrates as the normal stuff will thin the icing a bit). If you want the cake in the winne the pooh shape but only have round tins, make in advance & freeze. You can then cut round a template to get the right shape.
You could also just make the pooh figure flat in icing & then stick it on a round cake. Perhaps jazz it up with some icing 'balloons' on wires stuck out of the cake.
hth

THanks for all these brilliant ideas, they've certainly given me lots of inspiration. Fingers crossed it's not a disaster!