KayB's Cakes: Happy birthday, Wild Thing!!

It’s my party and I’ll make cake if I want too.

And make cake I did! I’m lucky enough to share my birthday with one of my best friends, Moon. She is exactly one year older than me, and therefore one year wiser than me. She is the most supportive, inspirational person I know. She is constantly bringing out the best in people and always puts others before herself. But as wise and gracious as Moon is, she is also a kid at heart. I’ve lost count of how many times she has seen the Where The Wild Things Are movie. It's one of her favourite children's books. She even made herself a super rad Max costume for Halloween last year.

See, super rad!

So, a Max cake it was! When it comes to cake decorating, I’ve decided to go back to the basics. I made a simple butter cake with a buttercream filling and icing (note: this is probably toooooo much butter for one cake). But the idea was to get the buttercream icing as smooth and even as possible, and practice my piping techniques.

I piped the Max outline in black royal icing the week before our birthday. After the outline had dried I used a flooding technique (using thinned/watered down royal icing to ‘flood’ the outlines with colour).

I put two layers of blue buttercream icing on the cake, a thin crumb coat on the Friday afternoon and a second, thicker layer Friday evening after the crumb coat had hardened in the fridge for 3 hours (ideally you should leave the icing to harden over night).

Saturday morning I added the final touches. A green pearl border and the classic line from Where the Wild Things Are, “LET THE WILD RUMPUS START!”. I practiced the text piping a few times before piping freehand on the cake. I was then able to place Max gently on the cake (his tail did snap off, but considering I was very concerned he might actually snap into several pieces, this didn't upset me one bit. I just tucked the tail underneath!).