It was Izzie's birthday on Saturday. She is now 8 years old and very tall (with lots of beautiful dark hair), very intelligent and super-affectionate. She loves to dance and is always doing little shimmies and dance moves, often absent-mindedly. Her appetite for reading is huge, her bookshelf is crammed and she devours all kinds of stories. I am lucky to have a close relationship with her and I adore her. I would do anything for her. So when she and my sister asked (at the last minute, natch) if I would make a rainbow cake for Izzie's birthday, of course I said yes.
Trolls is Izzie's favourite film at the moment (in fact, she saw it today at the cinema for, I think, the fifth time) and if you've seen the film you will know it is allll about the rainbows! So I promptly ordered a pack of little figurines, a set of rainbow food colour gels and googled the instructions.
I have had a half-hearted attempt at colouring cake batter previously; I used a ridiculously small amount of food colouring and ended up with a slightly peachy-coloured sponge when I was attempting for Battenberg pink. This time I was generous with the colouring and got it everywhere . My fingernails have splodges of violet and green, despite multiple scrubbings, and earlier this evening I noticed a drip of red colouring down the kitchen cupboard. This, my friends, does not make me happy! The cake ended up really tall and skinny so I added some support by poking a few wooden skewers through it. It still tilted slightly but what the heck, I knew it would be pulled apart by a pair of kiddos.
I covered the cake all over with buttercream and made some rainbow coloured lettering and stars to decorate the top. The little troll figurines circled the bottom of the cake.
I was apprehensive about cutting into the cake. It looked okay when I was putting the thing together but you never really know how these things are going to work until you cut through them, especially because the outside of the cakes had 'browned' to an odd colour in the oven. Izzie gave a little gasp of glee as she pulled out the first slice and Ellie's eyes lit up! Such a happy auntie moment. We all had [giant] skinny slices of it with coffee after our food and it tasted fine too. Not as delicious as my usual cakes because I followed a recipe that made the cake firmer and less buttery but it was good enough.
I have made nearly all of Izzie's birthday cakes over the years, I have shared them previously on my old blog but as I am about to close it down I thought I'd post them here. I have never made Ellie, the youngest, a birthday cake and I think it is about time I started.
For Izzie I have made (based mostly on her TV or toy obsessions) cakes decorated with Waybuloo, teddy bears, Rapunzel, Tinkerbell and monkeys (I think the jungle one was my favourite). Pics are posted below if you fancy having a look (the Rapunzel and Tinkerbell characters are plastic, I should point out!)
Thanks for popping by. Have a lovely week.
Nicki xox
