Alice in Wonderland Unbirthday Cake

I recently shared my eldest nieces Halloween themed birthday cake but I've not shared the one we made back in August for my other nieces birthday. When we first started making cakes for my nieces, we'd pick something they liked, like a favourite disney or cartoon character and it was pretty straightforward. I think what has now happened is that my sister leaves my nieces in front of google image search for a bit, and they look for the most difficult cake for us to replicate to see how far they can push us before we break. I never thought we'd be able to pull off the Alice in Wonderland cake for my youngest niece, especially as Ian was unable to help because he had lots of work to do. 

It was also tricky because we were attempting our very first topsy turvy cake. After much studying of you tube videos, I was confident I had an idea of the technique needed (you can get topsy turvy cake pans but we're always a bit last minute with these things!). Some careful carving and moulding of cake later, and we had the cake all covered (including a cheshire cat stripey bottom layer). 

Here's the finished cake in all it's topsy turvy glory. 

Again, the detail really made the cake - it's all there - the cheshire cats face (Ian took a break from his work to help with this one)...

...the tea set (non matching as I'd imagine all mad hatters tea sets are) along with the mad hatters hat itself....

...some playing card people (which we might have used non edible pen on because we only had a black icing pen - I don't think they were eaten but I'm sure it wouldn't have killed anyone if they were)

I'm really proud of my daffodil - the centre was really tricky to make and attach but I think it's clear what it's meant to be.

The daisy looks really happy to be part of the cake (and so it should!)

The eat me label on the entire cake was my favourite part (and one of the only things not on the cake picture we were working from).

Alice in Wonderland clearly isn't my nieces favourite movie as she was confused by the 'unbirthday' tag (this confirms my suspicion that she was just trying to test our cake skills!).

Halloween Birthday Cake

My niece was born very close to halloween. Consequently every birthday cake we make for her these days is halloween themed. This year we took inspiration from this cake here but she's now old enough to know what she likes so she made her own tweaks to the cake. Because we were working towards not just a picture, but her description of what she wanted, it was a bit daunting as we had to hope we'd understood the brief correctly.

She seemed pretty pleased with it - I wasn't there when she cut into it to reveal the colourful insides but I'm happy with how it turned out. 

Ian did a great job making all the skulls (he did get a bit bored because he had to make 8 of them all the same and that's not really his thing) - check out this close up of one.

The pumpkins were slightly more fun because we could give them each a personality of their own. I got to arrange them on the cake so of course my favourite ended up at the front.

He looks so shocked to be there - it makes me giggle. As does the goofy one.

But look at this poor one. I don't think he wanted to join the party!

It's definitely the little details that makes the cakes fun, and I think my nieces enjoy looking for them when the cake arrives. It turns a nice simple cake into something special. (Simple cake as it was, it still required 3 shopping trips and over a day of work!)