Cake ideas!

[wobblyknicks]

My mum's 60th birthday is coming up soon and I'm going to make a cake for it. I'm planning to try a lot of cake decorating soon so this is a good starter (not much point in making endless cakes for nothing!) and so I want to do something fairly complicated (ie, not just icing and a few candles). Only problem is I don't know what design to do.

Do I do the number 60 (which might rub it in too much) or just something else she'll like. She likes gardening but I just don't know what to make!

How on earth did this get posted twice??

Stupid PC!!!!

Thanks ks, that sounds good. Just thinking that a 60 cake might depress her!!!

And if it goes missing in the fridge, I'll just have to check in the door!

She's a holistic therapist and used to be a teacher

Not much else she really likes - Star Trek and Colin Firth but I think it would be a tiny bit sad to do a cake on either of those! (might do myself a Colin Firth one tho - clothes NOT included!)

might be good but wouldn't that look a bit messy, with all different bits here and there?

(god, I'm hard to please!!)

Wobblyknicks (love that name!) I have two beautiful books on decorating that inspire me:
The Perfect Wedding Cake by Kate Manchester, Cakes in Bloom by Anna von Marburg (wonderful and my favorite). I had purchased Colettes's Cakes for technique, but I don't use that one as much. I just did a three-tier wedding cake for some friends with a Native American Indian theme, I did Indian blankets with fondant--along with a medicine wheel, etc. etc., it was really fun cake, I topped it with a navajo wedding vase I made out of sculpy clay (only non-edible portion of the cake). If I knew how to use the scanner (and it was hooked up), I would post it somewhere for you to see. You can do a marvelous cake, let your imagination run wild and have it be fun! Query up teaching and holistic therapy on google and get ideas from the web sites that come up for you. You can do a tribute to her accomplishments or just focus on her holistic therapy...over here they import fondant made in NZ which is delish and you can get some ready made fillings to go with your almond. Are you making the fruitcake type then?

How about a classroom with gingerbread desks, and on some of the desks sugarpaste models of these 'favourite things'?

I once made an oval cake with a race track around the edge, and each 'racer' was a model of something from the birthday boy's life.

Good idea boyandgirl!

Hi wobblynicks
why not simply the letter MUM

letters sorry MUM

I recently made a cake from a book by Carol Deacon who's got a fair few books out on novelty cakes (borrowed mine from the library) it was simply to make and I managed to get it right first time (and I'm no expert)

The cake (chocolate) was lovely and still tasted great when we finfished the last piece a week later.

Would your mum prefer a novelty cake or a more traditional one? Find your nearest cake decorating shop and pay them a visit. You will be able to hire cake tins in lots of different shapes (oval, flower shape, elongated hexagonal or octangonal, novelty shapes etc) so the basic shape of your cake can be interesting to start with. They will also have loads of books on cake design, and will probably be cake decorators themselves, so they will be able to give you lots of advice.
Pre dd, I used to do lots of cake decorating - I made my wedding cake and for both my sisters and several friends, plus lots of other celebration cakes. It's a great hobby, but very time consuming, so I only make one cake a year now, for dd's birthday.
One popular design I used to do was to make a small card shape out of flower paste, cut a hole in the front of the card, place it on top of the cake once it had dried and arrange small sugar paste flowers to peep out of the hole. You could pipe a design around the sides of the cake, or make drapes out of sugarpaste. For my dad's 65th birthday I made small plaques out of sugarpaste onto which I cocoa-painted pictures of his hobbies, then stuck them around the sides of an elongated octagonal cake. I made some sugarpaste flowers for the top and a Happy Birthday plaque. You could always use fresh flowers - I think they look lovely on a cake, or dried flowers so your mum has something to keep.
Hope this has given you some ideas - I've probably not explained things clearly - if you want to know more, just ask! Good luck with your cake .

what about a cake shaped like a terracota flowerpot with some pansies or something spilling over the edge? i love gardening and that would make my day!