Josh's 7th Birthday - Minion Edition

NEWS FLASH! A couple of weeks ago my little brother turned seven...I can't believe it! Which also means I started uni seven years ago, he was born a week before I started uni, ugh. But the big story here is that this is the first cake he didn't insist on having Super Mario on. He didn't have it last year, but he did beg last minute for - but not this year.

We both love Despicable Me, who doesn't? Minions of course rate quite highly so I couldn't have been more excited when he wanted a minion cake, yay! My dad made all of our cakes when we were little so he wanted to join in and help decorate it. My favourite was the Mr. Blobby Cake, I will tell you more about that cake later.

The cake itself it a vanilla sponge sandwiched with jam and smothered in buttercream. For the decoration I covered the cake in sky blue fondant, with white cartoon-like clouds, grey tarmac (from a level in the Minion Rush game he's completely obsessed with) and of course a fondant minion! For the minion, we used a stencil, I say we, but this is the part I my dad did. We're both fans of the stencil technique but as we forgot to print any out we made makeshift ones from tracing an image in my iPad, and it worked pretty well actually.

So my dad cut out and assembled the minion, who is called Carl (true story), and I piped the black royal icing outline.This was actually a lot easier than I expected, thank God for 2D images! By this point I had already iced the cake and we started laying on the fondant minion and getting him (sorry, Carl) in the right place. I thought he looked really cute his dungarees and huge eye. The piping part was quite simple actually the only artistic was I did was to give him hair. I always buy ready made black royal icing to pipe as it's such a hassle to make and takes quite a bit of black colouring.

So after the minion was piped and ready to go I added the white fondant clouds and my little brother wanted to put the candles on himself, he did a pretty good job too may I add. So, the cake was finally ready. He loves the whole deal of singing happy birthday, blowing out the candles and everyone clapping.

The piece he wanted, is the piece all children want - the eye! And I made sure he got it too. BECAUSE - when I was little, 7 infact! I had a Mr. Blobby cake...no one judge me, I loved him and I will always love him. Anyway, all I wanted was the eyes, I don't know why - I just did. And this was of course the only piece sent away to someone, and I have never forgiven him and keep telling my dad he owes me another Mr. Blobby cake so I can eat the eyes. So it was very important that my little brother was not also scarred by a memory like this (I'm trying to guilt trip my dad here, if you can't tell...I want the eyes next year....) so this is exactly what he got...even though the piece as huuuuuuuuge!

Everyone enjoyed the cake and he loved it which is all that matters in the end anyway isn't it. I loved my week down in the south with him doing lots of fun stuff in the last part of his summer holiday. Here's a few pictures from the week too.

I clearly make him pose for too many pictures with me... but we spent some days at the beach with my older brother building epic sandcastles and burying each other, spent his birthday at Legoland which was AMAZING, baked biscuits, went to Fort Nelson, drove around with the roof down like pimps and generally had a lovely time doing lots of silly stuff, same again next year!

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A Birthday Out Of This World!

So this weekend was my little brother's sixth birthday, I can't believe he's six already, he was born a week after I moved to Southampton where my dad lives for University so we have a really strong bond. I try to get down to see them all as much as I can and love being able to enjoy all of the fun things with - luckily he loves baking!

Since his fourth birthday I've made all of his birthday cakes, and they've all been Mario based - last year I did try for Toy Story...I lost the battle. This year however his obsession is space and planets, he still loves Mario but he really can't get enough of the solar system at the moment. Which of course is brilliant and already decided to make planets for the cake, the only down side is that he knows exactly how big they should all be in comparison to each other! I did get special permission though to put them in any order I wanted...very generous of him :D There was a last minute request for Mario riding Yoshi but I managed to get out of it!

He had a family party and a party for his friends, I normally only do the friends party cake, but I was so excited about not having to do Mario for once I decided to make both. Luckily though for the family cake I only made giant cupcake which I now make in record time. So for the family party I decided to still use the space theme, I'm a bit annoyed I left my nozzles at home so wasn't able to swirl the buttercream in my normal fashion, but them with it being 'space' the normal rose swirl would look a little odd? Anywhere there is the first cake, As for the planets I made (or attempted to) Mars, Earth, Saturn and Neptune, I also made the sun for them to orbit - I made these out of fondant and were a bit droopy in places but he loved them so that's all that matters. I topped it in blue vanilla buttercream, gold stars and of course tied it up with a gold bow. These giant cupcakes actually feed a surprising amount of people i must have cut at least ten slices leaving a good fifth left!

So onto the next cake! This is now the third year running he has had a bowling party, it all began when he become hooked on Wii bowling and discovered real bowling was just as fun! So being given free reign with the space theme I decided to combine it with bowling and make a bowling-space cake! I had a great idea that planets would make brilliant bowling balls...I tried to make them look quite cosmic with the cake glitter and marbleing but think they look like normal bowling balls but actually think they look brilliant!

 The cake itself is vanilla with vanilla buttercream, covered in blue fondant. I did try to keep the colour uneven for a milkyway effect but not too sure on how that worked out. I decided to go with the bowling alley look as it gave me a lot of surface area to play with and he loved the idea of being able to bowl with planets. The lanes again I tried to marble to give a wood effect and the arrows I made from cutting out a small black star and chopping the points off to make sure they were all the same size. 

I did made 10 pins but it looked far too crowded so left a few out, I loved the idea of making them look like they were being smashed out of the cake by the planet ball so made them with sugarpaste onto mini cake pop sticks so they could come out at all angles. I also piped some red icing to make them look more realistic. I have to say I get really competitive on the lanes and always check out the other cakes so see what everyone else brought....( I won! shhhhh - yes I'm childish!)

 The sides of the cake gave me lots of room to make planets. First I smeared blue cake glitter to try to create that milkway effect in a band and then layered the planets and stars on top. I went for Neptune, Saturn, the Moon, Mercury and again the Sun. I dusted them all with glitter to make them look a bit more galactic. The big stars I made with yellow fondant covered in gold glitter and the small ones I bought in a pack from The Happy Cupcake Company in Lyme Regis. To finished I made a curly '6' for the top and edged it with a red ribbon all ready for the party.

I gave him our present the day before, a peronalised Southampton football kit (his favourite team) with a 6 on the back, in a space box I drew on! As for the party itself, well it was crazy! 11 hyped up children running out with baloon swords and dasies throwing around heavy bowling balls...it was brilliant! He even got his own skittle to take home. I wonder what cake I'll be asked to make him next year? Whatever it is I bet Mario won't be too far away...

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