4th birthday cake inspiration - last minute!

[purpleturtle]

Dd is 4 tomorrow. I'm about to make a chocolate cake. Had thought she had her heart set on a naff treasure chest cake in one of her little cookery books, but thought I'd double check. (Just as well)

Apparently, she now wants a "round one", with sprinkles on it. So I'm about to bake said round cake. In my cupboards I have a pretty good variety of cake decorations - flowers, sprinkles, smarties, jelly diamonds, etc etc. There are also some fairy cakes which could be added to the big cake.

As "a round cake with sprinkles" doesn't sound like it would be exciting enough to impress my friends , could any of you wonderful people come up with a suggestion of a design i could use based on these limitations? Please?

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love the way we have to 'impress our friends'

will have a think whilst bathing ds

Impress your friends by not bothering to impress Write your Dd's name in smarties!

But my whole sense of self-worth is tied up in this cake.

Shame we gave her an eight letter long name really! Could pipe that though.

Or make picture with all your bits and bobs (I did princess picture for DD's 4 doing just that) This year she asked for a Barbie cake from Tesco's!!

Perhaps I should set dh to work with the bits & bobs - he's much more arty than me. Joint effort would be good

How about a crown (using the fairy cakes, perhaps cut in half as the points) or making the top like a garden with flowers created from the various decorations, or a butterfly shape filled in with sprinkles, diamonds and smarties.

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round chocolate cake?

make a hedgehog (have you got any chocolate fingers to poke in?)

round cake with sprinkles - how about a merry-go-round - pole with ribbon hanging down - push in some plastic animals? - or a maypole

oh I don't know

are you going to do a chocolate cake covered in icing then covered in sprinkles? -

Probably the latter.

Do you have any stencils?

Maybe a stencil of a fairy or something else she likes

You could use some paper to cover over different sections - spread apricot jam on the top of the icing in the stencil area and sprinkle over different coloured sprinkles in different areas

(assuming you have different ones of course)

I think that could be really effective actually

I mean sellotape paper over different sections of the stencil of course

Do you have a cake board

You could pile up the fairy cakes in turrets on each corner of the round cake - top with an ice cream cone upside down - decorate and

Voila a fairytale castle (I did a castle for DS's 4th birthday so adapting that thought really)

Cake's in the oven.

I like the stencil idea, Twiglett. Reminded me that my mum used to sprinkle icing sugar over a doily on the top of cakes.

I've seen fairytale castles, and I think that I might save them for another year. I quite fancy having a go at one, but dd's not really reached fairytale princess stage.

Of course, my mind has gone completely blank on what dd actually likes! (This is the child whose only request for a birthday present has been a suitcase - purple suitcase coming up!)

I did toy with the idea of a suitcase shaped cake - but it wouldn't be round, and could therefore be a total failure.

Letters and numbers would probably make her happy enough (that's what I get for marrying an academic, I suppose )

OK, so now that I've had a slight disaster turning it out of the tin , whatever I do, I'm going to have to smother the cake in icing first!

If anyone still has any interest:

The cake is now decorated with chocolate butter icing, a big multi-coloured Smarties 4 on top, with candles, and round the sides lots and lots of hundreds and thousands. Surrounded by fairy cakes topped with hundreds and thousands.

Thank you very much for your help, especially Twiglett. And to those who said - never mind what your friends think: I listened!

Right, I'm off to bed. Just a few short hours till the verdict .

Just about to ask you what you did in the end. Sounds great. Bet it was a success

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