Toadstool cake

So now to the cake...as I've said before, this was the first real attempt at anything other than a basic slapped on buttercream and sprinkles finish.  I was so fed up of paying £90 plus for cakes every time we had any sort of celebration that I vowed to at least give it a go.  I am most definitely not an expert, I wouldn't even really consider myself as average, but what I am getting better at is covering up the crap bits.  My trick, so far this has worked for me, is to choose something which means you can do a fair amount of the work days, or even weeks ahead.  That way you can work around the children's bed times and spread it out so you don't end up completely losing the plot by the date of the party.

There is absolutely no way you will ever see me fannying  about  the night before trying to not only bake 400 cakes but also fashion them into a fort or pirate ship, that was more of my mum's forte and something I have neither the patience, time or artistic capabilities to pull off.  I go for basic cake structures, a lot of pre-made or **cough** shop bought decoration/flowers etc and then there's a sort of mad panic the night before when it's all thrown together on a bit of a wing and a prayer. I've had some touch and go moments but they all seem to have turned out passable in the end.

Decorations such as bees, ladybirds, dragonflies, pond, windows, spots  and doors  etc can all be made far in advance from modelling paste, food colouring and a bit of googling and patience. The pieces can be 'stuck' together with just water and a pastry brush.

Party tip no 2: No one  actually cares what it looks like. When the worst case scenario is having to sack off the cake altogether and get a Wiggles the Caterpillar cake from Sainsbury's, you realise it's really not that bad if it fails. The kids are happy whatever and the parents are just impressed at the effort. You are the only one that will notice the ripped fondant or wonky windows.

I had no choice but to make this in the height of summer on one of the hottest weeks of the year. Having made and decorated all of the parts apart from the cake, I went to bed 2 days before the party feeling pretty chuffed at my first attempt at icing a cake board.  With just the cake to do, I came down in the morning to find that the fondant had melted. The entire base of green fondant was wet. Oh buggar.  After a mini meltdown, Mr Mum's Guide saved the day, I probably wouldn't tell him this but he does tend to be the voice of reason when the shit is right royally hitting the proverbial fan.  We borrowed a friend's desk fan and pointed it at the cake board for 2 days straight in an attempt to save the fondant.  Amazingly, it worked!! I'm not sure I'd have wanted to eat it afterwards but luckily everyone only wants the cake anyway!

So here's the how to on the toadstool cake:

Basic 4442 cake recipe; 4oz each of butter, caster sugar and self raising flour and 2 large eggs (or 6663/8884 depending on the amount of mixture you need.). It's a bit of a guesstimate really depending on the size of the mixing bowl you are using.

You'll need probably about one lot of the 4oz recipe and then one batch of 8oz recipe-add a bit of lemon zest if you want a lemon sponge (zest of one lemon per 6oz I tend to use but it's all down to taste)

Additional items:
*Cake dowels-or I have used cake pop sticks before as ran out
* A 500g tin - can be a bit tricky to find but Sainsbury's/Tesco had them with something like sweetcorn in
* Baking parchment
* 8" round cake tin
* Medium sized mixing bowl
*8" thin cake board
12" thick cake board for base
* Ready made red fondant icing-2 packets probably needed
* Ready made white fondant-one small packet will be plenty
* Ready made white and green colouring or green fondant
* Enough buttercream to cover all of the cakes- again a bit of trial and error-try to use one with very little or no milk-note, the longer you mix the lighter it becomes (at least 5 minutes)
* Some shop bought butterflies/flowers
* Pre-made fondant paste animals -bees, snails, ladybirds etc

Grease and then line the empty/cleaned 500g tin with strips of baking parchment so that they cross over on the base like a star and overhang the top by a couple of cm.  This is so that you can lever the cake out of the tin once it's baked. Fill to approx 2/3 and bake until browned on top and skewer comes out clean; 25 mins or so.

Grease and line 8" tin and bottom 1/3 - 1/2 of mixing bowl and bake mixture until browned and skewer inserted comes out clean.

Turn out all of the cakes and leave to cool.

Cover a 12" thick cake board with rolled green fondant (spray a little water onto the base to help the fondant stick)

Sandwich 8" cake and mixing bowl cake together using buttercream and then cover the whole of the outside in buttercream. Before you do this, you may want to attempt to smooth the join between the two with a knife so there isn't such a divide and the edges are more rounded to look like the top of a toadstool.  Roll out the red fondant onto a floured surface and use the rolling pin to lift and place over the cakes.  Smooth all over with a smoother (less than £1 on Amazon and invaluable.)

Cover the tin cake with buttercream and the rolled white fondant-you need the fondant to be fairly thick to stop it ripping.

Insert 3 dowels into the tin cake and mark where the top of the cake falls with a pen, then trim the dowels.  Re-insert.  Place onto the back centre of board.  Place the 8" cake onto a thin cake board and place the top of the toadstool onto the base.

It's now just decorating.  Use a little water and a pastry brush to stick on the white spots, door, windows, stepping stones, animals etc.  I used a star tip and piping bag to pipe grass to cover any dodgy edges (all of the dodgy edges!) I am certainly not any good at piping but it's so easy-give a little squeeze then pull up and away and it gives a grass effect.

Then that's it. A pretty easy but effective cake that any child will love.  I was given the highest praise of all...a "wow" from my little girl.  Makes it all worth it...even if she'd have said the same to Wiggles.

A woodland inspired party - those toadstools

So this is pretty much where it all began to get a little more than just paper plates and party rings (not that there's anything wrong with either!)...Tabatha's 2nd birthday and my first real attempt at multi-tiered and fondant iced cakes.  I don't really know what possessed me to start with a shaped cake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time...more on the b*****d cake later.

I bought a "grass" table runner online, which has actually proved quite useful in subsequent parties, and used this and a giant slab of tree trunk (borrowed from my best friend) to set the scene.

I thought (please note the past tense!) that it would be a lovely idea to get crafty with my daughter and make some papier mâché toadstools and I roped in mum to help too.  Anyone with young kids knows their attention span tends to be shorter than a goldfish, so you inevitably end up finishing said crafty project in the wee hours of the morning once the crap arty bits and bobs have been tidied away.  When it comes to papier mâché, this generally means the best part of an hour scraping the crusted concrete from the table, floors, walls, doors, any washing drying in the immediate vicinity  and any surface of the house below about 1m...I think in future we'll save the joy of papier mâché for Nanna's house.

Luckily mum and dad have a smidge more creative ability than I do, otherwise I'm sure I'd still be attempting to build papier mâché toadstool bases around varying sizes of plastic bottles; seemed like a genius idea at the time...in hindsight, a bit bloody stupid.  I'm pretty sure I also got the ratio of flour to water wrong somewhere along the line as the next morning the whole house smelt like a men's sweaty changing room.  No amount of paint was covering it, and in fact the sodding mixture was so ropey, it kept cracking and then releasing even more of the putrid stench, it was almost as if the paint was aggravating it further.  I went with them anyway, the party guests would have to lump the smell and probably assume that my children were extremely grubby.  I was happy to take the risk rather than spend another week of my life remaking the toadstools.

So here they are, in all their glory.  Toadstool tops made using upturned bowls of varying sizes and bases are a combination of kitchen rolls, loo rolls, wooden dowels my dad had in the garage and some sort of cardboard tube my dad had, again in the garage (I presume kept for a moment such as this!)

Party tip no 1: It really doesn't matter if it looks crap, you can always tell people the kids helped

How it all began...

Ever since our engagement nearly 6 years ago and subsequent marriage,  I've realised how much I love to plan. I always thought I should be a wedding planner but then realised I'd have to be enthusiastic about people's taste, even when it's flying ducks as my mum likes to  call it.  So it went on the back burner.  Kids took over, as they do, and my fledgling legal career came to an end before it really got going (being made redundant on maternity was the best thing in hindsight!) 6 years and 2 little monsters later and I find myself juggling 2 jobs and planning their parties instead.  After 2 years of piecing together toddler's parties, christenings and adult birthdays on a shoestring budget and a realistic amount of "mum" time, I've realised there just isn't someone telling it like it is.  For any mums out there trying to find 5 seconds of peace to think about themselves, let alone a sodding party, this blog's for  you.  I'm going to document my best crafty victories and the most monumental "oh s***" moments as I go about planning my kids parties and I'll try to throw in some ideas along the way.

                                    

Budget: sod all

Artistic flare: quite a bit less than sod all

Enthusiasm: plenty...ok, that may be a bit of an over-estimation, but at least some (on days when the kids are deciding to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time!) 

This is for the mums that want to do something a little bit different but have neither the time nor inclination to spend hours of their precious baby-free time scrolling through countless supermum blogs and celebrity party planning books. (Doubtlessly written by people who clearly have not actually tried to plan said party with Topsy and bloody Tim blaring and a baby attached to your hip with what can only be assumed is Araldite!)