birthday cake Archives ⋆ Our Growing Paynes

Go ahead. Question my sanity. It was my idea to have a family get together where we celebrate 8 out of the 12 birthdays. Given how this year has gone from on emergency to another in the family and my sister in the middle of her recovery, there hasn’t been time to get together as a family!

I am sure I wasn’t the only one wondering what we were getting ourselves into. It’s one thing to all get together for a meal but another to get through all the presents and cake in a short amount of time. But it was a lovely day. The weather was gorgeous and the kids had a great time running about. I think the cutest thing was my three year old nephew getting a hold of the hose. This little peanut hosing down his wagon. And of course when he turned so did the water. We stayed out of range. 🙂

The tricky bit I had to sort out was the cake. Five of the birthdays were for the kids. Originally I planned on doing cupcakes but I just didn’t have the time to decorate individual cupcakes, it would be faster to do a cake. But how to do a cake for kids ranging from 3-14 without making it crowded or corny?

I really wanted each of them to be represented so it took me a couple of days to figure it out. The littlest one is majorly into Thomas the Train. He is just enthralled with the whole thing. My niece loves My Little Pony, my other nephew is into Pokemon, and my son thinks Olaf is the best thing since sliced bread. And of course my daughter who is becoming a young lady so she’s not into those types of things but she had to be represented somehow.

Thank goodness for the internet. A quick search leads to ideas on how to make a character so it actually looks like it. It’s one thing to freehand volcanoes and castles but I can’t screw up Olaf!

I also did the pokemon circle in gum paste but due to time constraints I went store bought for the rest. I don’t think I have the skills yet to do Thomas or My Little Pony.

Added a bit of flowers for my daughter and a bit of whimsy with yellow.

We had a wonderful day of family, good food, and laughter. The best bit was my little nephew’s face when he realised it was Thomas on the cake. 🙂

My kids love creative cakes. Well they love cake so I could get by with a bit of frosting. But they really love something over the top. It’s my son’s birthday this month and he has been thinking about his cake for months! We talked about a pirate cake for which he was on board. Then we talked about a cake with knights and that perked him up. Then I said what about a castle cake that has knights defending the gold with the pirates attacking? Eyes go wide. Score! 🙂

As I mentioned in this apple jam post he really wanted the apple filling. I made that the day before his family party.

Several days prior I needed to make the castle tower so it was set and ready to go. Crispy rice treats are a major component to doing something like this.

It’s very unglamorous but you squish the treats together to form the tower and the bits at the top until you get the shape you need.

I like to use gum paste to cover the form so I mix in the colours I need for this and start wrapping the tower. It gets a bit fiddly trying to blend the seams.

Then I add the doors and windows and the floor of the top of the tower. Once finished stick toothpicks on the bottom so it can be attached to the cake.

Now when I showed him the tower he was thrilled. I had bought some figures and was going to keep it relatively simple. But then my MIL got grand plans! She said to my son how wonderful it would be with a moat, drawbridge, fencing, etc. Facepalm. LOL Back to the drawing board! I managed to figure it out.

On the day of I placed the cake onto the board for decoration. He requested yellow cake for this layer.

I had some round chocolate cake in the freezer so I layered that onto the yellow cake with apple jam.

I then took broken pieces of cake to form a rough “cliff” which I didn’t take any photos of unfortunately. I placed the tower onto the cake then used buttercream frosting in green, yellow, and blue as this was a cliff scene coming off a beach. I made a yellow moat with blue gel for the water.

Next I used brown sugar as the sand. I placed the figures round the cake to set up the scene.

I found these great tall birthday candles that I used for torches round the tower and then one near the canon to light it. 🙂 I used yellow peanut M & Ms for the gold.

I used part of a kitkat bar as the drawbridge.

And what is a fantasy scene without a dragon?

Needless to say he loved it. 🙂

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: birthday cake

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