D'lish Donut Shopkins Birthday Cake

Do you know what Shopkins are? If you have children then you might… if like me you are yet to become a parent then you can be excused for having absolutely no idea!

 

I’ve written before about the fantastic charity Free Cakes for Kids – I made a Rapunzel cake for a girl who otherwise wouldn’t have had a birthday cake.

 

Another request came through from the same group that I decided to volunteer for, for a child who would like a Shopkins cake, even though I didn’t know what that was. Shopkins turned out to be a collection of characters based on items you find in the supermarket – everything from cakes to fruit to a loaf of bread, bottle of bubble bath and even clothes and shoes. They have names like Suzie Sundaw, Mandy Candy and Angie Ankle Boot.

 

I browsed the website for a while until I was able to find a character I thought I could easily incorporate into a cake and remembered I had a giant doughnut cake mould I bought in the sale ages ago and had never used. There is a Shopkins character called D’lish Donut that looks like a pink iced ring doughnut with sprinkles (and of course arms, legs and a face) which I thought would be perfect.

 

The mould comes in two pieces - simply grease them and fill with cake mix.

 

I used a standard Victoria sponge cake recipe for this cake – as it was for a child, I wanted to avoid strong flavours or making it too rich and thought that the icing would be sugary enough!

 

 

 

 I filled the cake with jam and buttercream – the cake mould worked perfectly, turning out the bake cake into a perfect ring doughnut shape.

 

 

 

It wasn’t too hard to decorate – I decided water icing with pink food colouring might be too runny and not look very neat so I coloured some white roll-out fondant, cut it into a  circle large enough to go over the cake and cut a space in the middle. The arms and legs are also made of fondant, and I used some tiny plunger cutters to cut out diamonds from pink, blue and yellow fondant, and stuck them with a dab of water on top to look like sprinkles.

 

The eyes took a couple of attempts and my husband actually ended up helping with these! We made four circles of diminishing size in white, blue, black and white, and layered them to make the eyes. I then used black fondant to make a nose and some eyelashes and pink fondant for the mouth.
 

 

I put the cake onto a silver board and at the last minute decided to spell out the little girl’s name with leftover icing. I had a lovely email afterwards from the charity co-ordinator saying she had been really pleased with her cake – it was fun for me to make a cake for a child and to copy a cartoon character as I don’t get a lot of opportunity to do that (my neice is 8 months old so too young for cake) – and of course I was able to do something good and help a charity that hopefully made a difference and helped that little girl have a happy birthday.

 

Sonic the Hedgehog Bas-Relief

Bas-relief in cake decorating is rather like applique in sewing or decoupage in card making – it’s a method of building up a flat picture to give a three-dimensional effect. The name bas-relief actually comes from sculpture and carving but is a common technique in cake decorating.

 

 We covered this in the final session of my cake decorating course at South Thames College. As usual I was running late as I had to stay longer than expected at work, so when I arrived, people were colouring their sugarpaste already. The tutor Bridgette had provided a selection of templates – black line drawings printed on A4 paper – including Hello Kitty and Super Mario. Hello Kitty looked quite simple (though the final effect from those who did it) and I wanted something a bit more challenging.

 

I spotted Sonic the Hedgehog which I remembered from computer games of the 1980s (though I never had any Sonic games) – my boyfriend is into computer games and while these days it’s more Call of Duty (and Lego Marvel Superheroes which even I like playing!) I thought Sonic might be a good birthday cake topper to make for him one day.

 

We mixed a little tylose (CMC) powder into the sugarpaste to stiffen it; you don’t need to use expensive flower paste as you don’t need to roll it out that thin, but you do need the icing to be a little harder than regular sugarpaste or fondant.

 

Bridgette had helpfully given me a sheet with exact quantities I needed of each colour so I added gel colour to my icing and weighed out the right amounts.
 

I started off with the head, and cut out Sonic’s head from the template with a pair of scissors. I laid that on top of my blue sugarpaste/CMC mix and cut around it with a knife.

You can put the bas-relief straight onto an iced cake but mine was going onto a cake board which I had already covered with fondant.

 

Place the head on first then cut out the other shapes and place them on top, to build up the layers. The flesh-coloured portion around the mouth was actually rolled into a sausage shape and flattened slightly, rather than cutting out a flat piece.

 

 

For the white parts on the arms and legs, roll some small sausage shapes, cut to the same length and bend over to make an arch.

 

The ear is cut from flat pieces but then added to the head in a standing-up position.

 

 

I think he looks pretty good, don't you?

Minions Cookies

The Minions film is out this weekend - I haven't seen it but I loved them in Despicable Me and the sequel, so much so that my boyfriend bought me a cuddly Minion toy and the unicorn (It's so fluffy!) at different times.

I couldn't resist buying this cookie kit for just £1 from Iceland; I don't usually buy packet mixes so I was curious to see how it turned out. You get a bag of shortbread mixture, to which you only have to add 20g butter or marg; a packet of icing sugar that looks white but turns yellow as soon as you add water, and a packet of rice paper decorations - eyes and mouths.

It couldn't be simpler to make up the packet mix, but you only get a tiny amount of dough - enough for just six cookies. I got seven as my cutter was slightly smaller than the recommended size.

They only take 10 minutes to cook in the oven; when they have cooled, decorate with the yellow icing. Mine was ever so slightly too runny so it spilled over the sides a bit. When the icing is still tacky add the edible decorations.

These would be really fun to make with kids and I had hoped to make these with my boyfriend's nephews while we were babysitting but I hadn't realised they were only allowed a certain amount of treats - which they'd already had with their grandmother by the time I got there- and I didn't want to be told off for filling them with sugar! So I made them myself at home and my boyfriend polished them off after dinner. Not quite as grown up as after-dinner mints but a lot more fun!