Fairy Toadstool Cake

For my daughter’s third birthday this year I let her look through all my cake books and choose which cake she would like. I wasn’t sure how well this would work out as she wasn’t even three yet; could I really expect her to pick a cake without her changing her mind a hundred times?? But after spending a long time studying all the pictures (and I didn’t even interfere by making helpful suggestions!!) she proudly announced she would like a fairy toadstool cake for her birthday! I then checked a couple of times a week that she still wanted the same cake and even though looking through my cake books had become her new favourite activity, the answer was always the same.

Ok, so now I only had to make the thing!! This was to be my second ever fondant cake…eek! I didn’t want to let my girl down so the hours of internet research began!! I spent considerable time googling images and watching you tube videos. After reading various techniques to construct the basic shape I decided on the bottom section of a giant cupcake mould turned upside down and trimmed for the house and a one litre Pyrex bowl for the roof. I was most nervous about the cake collapsing so rather than hollow out the roof I decided to support it on dowels instead! Then I had an idea that made my life so much easier. My daughter was having two parties, one for the family on her actual birthday and then another with her little friends. Seeing as this cake was going to take some time to make I didn’t really want to have to make another cake for the second party, so instead I made a second roof. So my family didn’t miss out and as soon as the roof had been eaten it was replaced by another one and voila good to go for the next party!!

Not much else to say really apart from my daughter was thrilled and after all the celebrating was over I let her play ‘fairy houses’ with the cake which she loved just as much as eating it!! Oh and we made cupcakes to coordinate with the cake too!! J