I’ve ticked another one off!
While certainly not as artistic as I hoped, it was well received…ish, therefore totally counts towards this task. I have finally found an opportunity to decorate a birthday cake.
If you’re new here you may be wondering what I’m talking about – so here’s the blurb.
What is a Kettle List?
Check out my ‘Kettle List’ post if you want the extended version. It even includes all of the tasks I plan on doing.
However, if you want the TL;DR, it’s like a Bucket List but less depressing. Basically, instead of doing all the things before I die, I want to get them done before March 2027, when I turn … well, a bit older.
I plan on writing up every task, whether completed or not, and I will update them as I go.
So this post is about task #25 – Decorate a Birthday Cake
Fine print: decorate a birthday cake
My inability to bake is legendary; while I have made a few cakes in my time I find no joy in baking. It stresses me out. It’s too much like science. There is a secret code to it, and I just cannot get to grips with it.
That is why I specifically worded this task to read ‘decorate a birthday cake’ rather than make one. The devil is in details people!
For Hannah’s 21st Birthday in June, I had an amazing idea. I wanted to create a bee-themed cake, to match all of the paper plates, cups and napkins we had bought. Even the gift basket was bee themed!
After voicing this suggestion, my mum leapt on it. She baked a cake and then roped in Harri – my artist daughter- to do the icing.
Which resulted in this masterpiece.
We were very happy with it, although my just having the idea and not doing any of the work meant it didn’t count towards my task completion.
Luckily, not only did I have a June baby, but I also had a July baby. July saw my youngest turn 16. Here was my chance to tick ‘cake decoration’ off of my list.
Decorating for the perpetually lazy
I’ve always been a planner – I love planning stuff. This entire website centres around my plans.
The problem occurs when it comes to the execution of said plans.
I had a vision of making Ethan a sloth cake. It needed to be recognisable as a sloth, so I did what any mother would do in this situation.
I cheated.
Not with the cake – that is a given. I bought a basic chocolate tray bake from Asda.
I mean with the decoration. It still counts though, as I made them myself…
Biscuits. I used biscuits.
But I am getting ahead of myself. To prep the cake I had to remove the mini chocolate balls that covered the cake. They were used to form the basis of a trunk on the far left of the cake.
Then, some green butter icing was used to create a general ‘leafy’ vibe along the top of the cake.
On its own, this would have been very unimpressive, but then I pulled out the big guns.
Shortbread sloths. They are currently selling a kit in Asda, although it only provided a basic cardboard shape to follow to get the silhouette of the sloth. The icing provided was also hard to use, as the precision provided by a plastic bag with the corner cut out is minimal.
Final result
There is no way the biscuits shown in the pictures on the front of the box were achieved using the provided items!
No matter – I worked with what I had. And this is the result.
Everyone was suitably impressed, and I was very happy with my work.
Until it was pointed out that if you turned the cake 90 degrees anti-clockwise, the ‘balls’ I had used to create the trunk now looked like the sloths had shimmied down the tree for their weekly “bio break”.
The whole thing still got eaten, so I’ll overlook that observation.
All in all – quite happy with my work, especially as I have now completed my first Kettle list task of the year (despite my plans in March)
Perhaps I might try it again with some other birthdays… Maybe Toby’s later in the year?
Either way, I can give this task the stamp and get on with folding a few more cranes.
