This is the story of Abney and Teal, they live on an island in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a park, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a big city. Sounds like a lovely way to live don't you think?
Each year I have a lovely client order a cake for their gorgeous little girl Zadie.
The great thing about my job is I get to research lots of lovely things whilst deciding on a cake design. And this week I fell in love with the little organic and earthy characters of Abney, Teal, Neep.....who I believe is a parsnip and the Poc Pocs, funny little wooden things !
This year Zadie is two and this is her favourite programme.
So we started baking.....a lovely vanilla and raspberry cake and covered it in lashings and lashings of delicious buttercream.
Then we smoothed it all off in preparation to be covered in fondant.
In the meantime.....whilst the fondant was drying I watched a bit of CeeBeebies and did some research. Then I constructed the elements to make these cool little characters. The really nice thing about this cake is that the colours of the animation are quite 'dirty' so it was a real challenge to mix the colours, yet still make the cake fun and rich in colour. What I wanted to avoid was bright primary colours, but emulate the organic look of the programme at the same time.
Making the little Poc Pocs was a challenge because I wanted to make them look like wood! (I think they are supposed to be carved from wood in the programme) Once all the bits and bobs were made I stuck them into the positions I wanted them to be on the cake. So I propped them up on an old polystyrene dummy. And used a big pot of sugarflair to stop Abney from falling over!
You might be wondering why Teal has no shoes, well I plan for her to have her feet dipped in the lake :)
To go with the cake I also did a batch of lovely vanilla and raspberry cupcakes, yum. I wanted them to have a simple design so made half of them in a daisy design and half with 'Eat Me' cake pics. I'm a bit of a creative, so made all the cake picks myself with some lovely paper I found in the craft shop. Then I crafted some mini bunting to string across the cake providing my idea went to plan. As you can see I printed Zadie's name across the flags. Sometimes I think it's nice not to blast 'Happy Birthday' over everything but to do it in a different way.
The daisies I made using a simple daisy plunger cutter. But I like my daisys to dry in an irregular fasion and so I made some formers from tin-foil. Sometimes the best equipment can be found at home in the cupboard!
Then I popped all the elements on top of the cupcakes with a big yummy whirl of vanilla buttercream. Gosh, I do things like this everyday and I still want to eat cake. Surely working with cake is supposed to put you off wanting to eat it all the time. Hmmmmm.
Cute but simple. The idea is that the main cake will be displayed on a pedestal cake stand and all the little cupcakes will sit around the base. Zadie is very lucky to get so many cakes for her birthday.
Finally to the big cake, I know you all want to know what happened next.......well I built the lovely lake and I built the island that Abney and Teal live on and I grew the grass and flowers in the park for the Poc Pocs to play in......
Then I put the lovely Abney and Teal in the positions I had planned for them and it all came together! Teal dipped her feet in the lake whilst Abney strung up the bunting. Not forgetting 'Neep' who watched over them both :)
At first I thought Neep was like the British Gas flame.....now I know he is a parsnip. And he has to be a 'He' as girls are too pretty to be parsnips.
The final cake. I totally enjoyed making this one and I hope you enjoyed reading the story.
Rachelxx
