Thursday xx

1st of May already..................and Roman's birthday in two days!

I started to make his birthday cake today.  Last year I did the pigs in mud cake and then looking on the net after his birthday came across the Minecraft cake in this blog post which I bookmarked to do this year.

There are 1,025 fondant square's on this Minecraft cake - my cake won't be that elaborate!

Click photo to go to Minecraft cake website!

I used this recipe to make two sponge cakes.  I coloured one cake with green food colouring and made the other a chocolate cake with the addition of cocoa powder.

Here is the green sponge cake before it went in the oven................

....................and here it is when I cut it open, its green!  Phew!  It was on the side cooling down when Anais came home from school - she asked if it was edible!

Chocolate sponge cake.................

I wanted the effect of a battenburg cake like I have made before but this time with the green and chocolate sponges, to mimic Minecraft blocks.  Each cake was cut in half and reassembled on top of each other - green cake - chocolate cake - green cake - chocolate cake to make one big cake.  The one big cake was then cut into four piece, two pieces turned upside down and re-inserted to give a block effect.

firstly one big cake cut in half, then each half cut in half again..........

chocolate fudge icing used to "glue" each quarter together...........

two of the quarters were turned upside down..............

the cake is then made up of sixteen pieces to make a check effect.

It is now being left in the fridge overnight tightly wrapped in cling film.  Each layer had a layer of chocolate fudge icing between it to act as a "glue".  From past experience it has been better to leave the cakes chilled in the fridge for a few hours before hand, this makes them less crumbly when cut.  I made the cakes when the kids were at school today and assembled them when they went to bed this evening.  Again from past experience it is better to leave them overnight to "glue" and be "squashed together".  It will then be ready for me to trim the sides level and decorate tomorrow.

Mark was in head office today - a long day for him.  He was back very late this evening due to motorway traffic.  Anais wanted to stay at home while I took Roman to his swimming lesson.  When we got back from swimming lesson Roman finished building his Lego Space set.

Today I also braved the rain to go to Asda and buy Roman some cakes to take to school tomorrow to celebrate his birthday.  I also finished my book Erica Spindler - "Cause for Alarm" - it was very good, I couldn't put it down.