Saturday 20 March 2010

One Swimming Pool Party Cake Coming Up!


Before you start reading, I've labelled this a tutorial, mainly because I love reading tutorials on other people's blogs and never put any on mine! I do miss out steps, so if you need more information about anything leave me a message!

Little Man is going to be 7 soon. My baby is disappearing all the time, and I can't believe where the time has gone. I should add that the baby is being replaced by one gorgeous cheeky monkey who I am beyond proud of. I'll stop there, there's nothing worse than a gushing mother!

Anyway, Little Man decided that he wanted a pool party this year, and since it was cheaper than anything else I could come up with, who was I to argue?! The only problem was he added that he wanted a pool cake and NOT from a shop. My hopes of a quick run to the supermarket returning triumphantly with a Ben 10 cake were dashed, and I had to get my thinking cap on.

He stipulated a chocolate cake, which isn't a problem, but I was stuck with the icing. The chocolate icing recipes I've used before (trust me, I've tried a few) are all too sweet. I love this stuff, I grew up eating it in my French great grandmother's kitchen:


So I searched the Internet for Nutella icing, and I found something similar to this:

Nutella Icing
3 to 4 tablespoons of Nutella
About 150ml double cream
A few drops of vanilla extract to taste

I put the Nutella, double cream and vanilla extract in a bowl and beat the mixture with an electric beater. That's it! I may have added a bit more cream to loosen the mixture a bit though. I did think I could have added a bit of icing sugar, but I was planning to put a layer of fondant icing on top of it, so I didn't. The cake then looked like this:



Right, now came the next problem, how was I going to turn a chocolate cake into a sparkling swimming pool? I went to Flickr and looked at all the pool cakes there, truely inspiring!

I visited a cake shop and bought:
White icing
Paprika colouring
Edible Lustre in a sparkling blue
Piping gel
Coloured fondant icing
A pack of writing icing in assorted colours.

I kneaded a tiny bit of paprika colouring with a lot of white icing, and got a pinky fleshy colour. Then I got to shaping and rolling bits of icing to make little people. I used to writing icing to pipe on the hair and Little Lady's swimming costume, and I used some green fondant to make the swimming trunks that have the legs sticking out of them. I ended up with these:


Then I rolled out more white fondant icing and laid it on the cake. I got a bit excited at this point, because I broke open the edible lustre, it's amazing stuff! It's powder, you brush it on with a paint brush and it colours the icing like paint! Then my cake looked like this:


You can probably see where I got over enthusiastic with my dusting, there was a bit of a blue haze around the edges of the pool. I decided to make the edges of the pool with more icing (it disguised my mess!). I rolled it out and scored it so it looked like it was covered in tiles.
After that I put lots of piping gel on the blue lustre which turned the icing into a proper watery pool - amazing!(Thanks should go to who ever it was on Flickr who came up with this!)
Finally I played with more icing, writing icing, half a small milky bar and some Smarties, and the finished product looked like this:


I think I've done my 20 Minutes today!
PS Since posting this entry, lots of very lovely people have left very nice comments about this post. Thank you to everyone! I'm so chuffed, it's made my day! I thought I'd post a few more pictures which show the 'water' a bit better than those in the original post (they were taken by Big Man, Little Man was too high by this point!):


Stephanie Lynn very kindly invited me to join this, and I promised I'd link to it, so:
UndertheTableandDreaming

13 comments:

  1. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!!!!!!!
    I love that cake, you are amazingly talented, fabulous, simply wonderful!
    Oh, and the nutella icing sounds sooooooooooooooooo good, lol. xxxx

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  2. Oh my goodness - that cake is amazing!! It's such a shame to cut it. I'm so envious - I have no patience for a project like that. I hope it gets plenty of oohs and ahhs on the day. M x

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  3. Fantastic cake! How can you possibly bare to cut it! Well done, its wonderful. You do realise from now on, you'll be expected to produce something increasingly fantastic each year!

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  4. What a fantastic cake! I've just signed up to be a 'twenty minuter' and discovered you. As Marmalade Rose says, you've set the standard now for all future cakes. I ended up having to make a Tiger wedding cake for my elder son!(Why is a long story I will have to blog about one day!) Hope the party went well, Penny x
    planetpenny.co.uk (Blogger won't verify this for some reason)

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  5. What a fabulous cake, I love it!
    Just wnated to pop by to say hello adn thank you for your lovely comment over at the Attic. I do always read every single one of my comments (even when there are hundreds), so please don't ever feel that yours might be lost amongst the rest....I've really enjoyed to hear from you! Plus, it has allowed me to come visit with you too, so good things all round :o)
    Lots of love
    Lucexxxxxxxx

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  6. Amazing cake and I'm drooling over the thought of that Nutella icing too!

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  7. Your cake is amazing!!! I have only worked with fondant a couple of times. I had more luck with purchased fondant over the homemade, but I'm not giving up on homemade because it's so good to eat! I love the way you decorated the cake and how the people look like they are in the water! Well done!!

    -Karen

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  8. This is an adorable cake. You have some talent with fondant...the little people are too cute! Would love to have you join the Celebration Inspiration party going on now. You did a great job!! ~ www.bystephanielynn.com

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  9. Thanks so much for joining the Celebration Party! I just adore this cake - super duper cute! Thanks again for coming over to share - I greatly appreciate it! Fantastic job!

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  10. What a fun cake...I love cake decorating!

    Susan
    www.crashthisparty.com
    http://entertainexchange.blogspot.com/

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  11. Hello! Just wanted to let you know I'll be featuring your cake today! Stop by and grab a featured button if you like! Thanks again for joining the Celebration Party!

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  12. Fabulous cake! Even my husband commented as he past the computer screen that he loved the cake. He thought it was cool. And I'm sure that your son thought so too & that is what is most important. I'm glad you shared it with us all & how you made it.

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  13. Hi!

    Firstly let me apologise if you haven't received any of my 3 comments...My browser was somehow blocking the comment process of blogs were comments appear embedded on the post page. It's all sorted now, thankfully!

    I just came over to thank you for adding your link to my party and to say that I've featured your post! :)

    If you want to check it out it's here:
    http://birdcrafts.blogspot.com/2010/04/link-party-show-off.html

    Hugs,
    Bird

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