Cakes gone by…

This Spiderman birthday cake is the very first cake I ever made for someone I didn’t know at all. I was petrified!

I have mentioned before that at the beginning of my cake decorating experience Tim said I should offer to make cakes for all of the parties that Beau and Darcey were invited to. Well, Ryan who was at nursery with Darcey was the first party invite we received. I can tell you I was really nervous just offering my cake services to anyone- even though it was for free. I was really worried that it might be the wrong thing to do or I might offend someone, but that was far from the truth.

When I phoned Ryan’s mum she was so sweet, she said “That would be lovely, he’s into Spiderman. Bring your business cards and I can hand them out to the other mum’s at the party!”  Of course I didn’t have any and was nowhere near that stage, but what a lovely gesture.

The plan

I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve. The cake was to be in the shape of Spideman’s head and was to be a nice oval mask shape.  I removed the top edges of the cake so that the nose shape came up in the middle (I didn’t want a completely flat cake – although looking back I would make this much more pronounced now!)

I covered the cake in red sugarpaste then lifted it up onto the white covered cake board and secured it in place with royal icing. I always knew I would ice spider’s webs in black royal icing around the edge of the cake to give it another dimension. I think the more detail you add to a cake board the more personal and better the cake looks.

To make the eyes I cut out paper templates until they were the right size and shape then placed them over rolled out sugarpaste and cut them to size. I set them aside ready for when I had done the lines over the cake.

Icing in straight lines

I usually have particularly steady hands but that didn’t stop me being really, really worried about doing the lines across the face. I mean once they are on they will make a really big mess if you try to remove them and start again, especially as they are black! I decided then and there that there is no point in worrying about it – you have to just do it! This has been my ethos from the start really. You have to do the lines so just get on with it already!

So, off I went, and as with most things that you are initially worried about, it wasn’t as difficult or scary as I thought it would be. The lines aren’t perfect but for a first attempt I was pretty happy.

While the icing was still wet I positioned the eyes. All that was left to do was to ice the name, age and add the spiders webs.

The party

The next day we went along to the soft play party with 20 other children. As the kids were only 3 years old all the mums had to stay and they all loved the cake, but none as much as Ryan – which was fantastic.

So I had my first cake under my belt and I thought offering my cake services would be easier after such a positive experience, but as I would come to discover in the coming months, it wouldn’t.

EmmaMT