Miffy cake (or where is all began)

I can't believe my little girl will be 6 in less than one month - where has that time gone? So in a reminiscent mood I thought I would post about the first birthday cake I ever made for my little ones.

I always thought I could do a decent job of any birthday cake but for Sophie's first birthday we opted to get a "professional" to make her a chocolate number 1. The resulting cake was disappointing and so I decided that I would make the cakes myself in future. Sophie's second birthday had a Miffy theme and I wanted to make her a cake to fit the theme. I opted to do just the head and ears (rather than the whole body) and wanted to try covering it in fondant icing (which I had never used before). My wonderful mother agreed to help and we set aside two full days to bake and decorate the cake.

We baked a round cake then trimmed it to be slightly oval and cut two ears from another piece of cake. Despite the number of images of Miffy everywhere, it was quite hard to create a template as each of the images has very different ears (it's true - take a look for yourself!). I opted for an image of Miffy with more rounded ears and cut the template out of paper. I then placed these on the sponges and carved around the different pieces.

I still feel proud of the finished cake and even with more experience there aren't many things I would change (except for the uncovered board!). I twisted a rope of fondant and placed this to hide the join between the ears and the head and then added little flowers to make it prettier. I also stacked some fondant flowers to stand the candles in - rather than putting them in Miffy's head - ouch!

Overall, a very simple but cute cake which was the start of my cake journey!

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.