The Kiki Cake

This is a little blog on the 'Kiki Cake'. Every year I make a cake for the same lovely family and their Daughters. Last year it was Abney and Teal, this year 'Kikis Delivery Service'. This is a real learning curve for me in children's programmes and this one I had never heard of!

It is a Japanese animation produced, directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki. It tells the story of a young witch named Kiki who flies around on her broom with her little cat. As well as being a lovely visual animation,  the movie touches on the gulf that exists between independence and reliance in Japanese teenage girls.

Despite all that, little Zadie who was about to turn three loves it, and so it was the choice theme for her birthday cake. The choice of flavour was also chocolate. Yum.

Having no knowledge of this film I had to watch it for a bit of research and loved the idea of having Kiki flying above the city, much like she does in the film.

So with a vague plan in mind I started by making her sat over a piece of dowel which was to become the broom. I thought this way I could stick the end of the dowel into the cake for support and she would look like she was flying. (well, that was the plan :)

I wanted to slowly add her hair in little pieces so I could make it look like it had a bit of movement, so I rolled little sausages out of floral paste.

Then of course she needed that big red bow for her hair which was easy to do as I had a nice silicone mould to do the job perfectly.

And not forgetting the little cat. As he is only a cartoon, he only needed to be a simple shape. A couple of legs and some big round eyes seemed to do the trick. Loving my fairy scissors.

I wanted him to be really shiny too, with a bit of sparkle, so before he went on the cake he got a good dose of glaze spray and a sprinkle of glitter. It gave him the perfect witches twinkle.

And now to the rest of the cake......well, in the film Kiki flys around a city, visual inspiration that originally came from a town in Sweden. The buildings really lend themselves to more of a European City much like Munic or Stockholm. There is also an important clock tower that features, so I went about creating a border for the cake made out of buildings. The lumps of colour are the pastel shades I chose to model my buildings from.

After rolling out and modelling some simple architectural shapes, I laid them over some old dummies to dry for an hour or two.

The main bulk of the cake I iced in blue. I wanted it to look like Kiki was in the sky flying over the city on her broomstick, with the cat! I made a slightly cobbled border on the cake board and then stuck all of the houses, and the clock tower around the outside. I even made a couple of clouds to sit in the sky.

Here is Kiki with her little satchel and cat on a broomstick. Mum requested that Zadie's name be on the cake too. Then everything got a good spray of super sparkle to give it a lovely lustre. There was also a sprinkling of glitter too (witches special magic dust) but it never really shows up in photos.

And here is the finished cake. It's lovely to have a little challenge. Especially with a theme you know nothing about. I hope you like it! :)

Now I wonder what next years theme will be.....