Birthday Boy!

I thought I would share this photo of my eldest son and his lovely girlfriend with you.  They do look such a lovely couple.

When asked what type of birthday cake he would like, he couldn't decide between chocolate, coffee or fruit.  Well I could not decide either so thought I would combine them all.  Here you see a coffee sponge with chocolate chips, filled with crab apple butter and mocha buttercream, topped with a white chocolate ganache and 3 types of sugar sprinkles to make the water effect.

Boats are one of my son's passions along with climbing, windsurfing and cycling.  So I knew a cake around one of these ideas would be good.  Blue is a colour I try to avoid with icing and foods, but having had to go into 3 different supermarkets and with cakes in mind I did check out the cake decorations.  It is amazing how many varieties are available now.  These ones were all good and not too hard on the teeth!

There also seems to be lots of cupcake toppers around at the moment and quite pricey too but not having seen any boat ones I decided 'we' should make our own.  This is the 'we' as in I sketched out roughly the idea, as in draw half a boat, mirror image it and colour in, then scan into the computer and copy numerous times before printing.  The actual doing of this I left to my daughter.  We then cut them out and stuck them around a cocktail stick.  I think she did an excellent job.  Personalised cake toppers at a fraction of the price. 

I did make him a few cakes to take into work too.  Chocolate mud cake with white chocolate ganache (and used up some of the blue sprinkles) and apple custard cakes.  Using my new cupcake carrier that I had for Christmas meant there was still a few left at home for us to sample!