I’ve been so busy lately! The Easter holiday was a blur; mainly because I was on a mission to make a VW camper van cake to celebrate Mick’s 60th birthday!
Now when I’m in cake class, I have my teacher demonstrating how to make the cake. She is always on hand to help answer questions … this time, I was on my own! My teacher loaned me a book with basic instructions for the cake, but it only showed how to make a cake topper, and I wanted to make a full sized cake. I think I bit off more than I could chew … literally!
It took a whole afternoon just to mix and bake the sponge as the cake tin I’d bought was huge! While the cake was baking, I iced the board and made the icing sugar base that the cake would rest on. I was trying to colour white icing black …nigh on impossible. I settled for a dark grey and painted the edge that would be seen with black food colouring; a good compromise I thought … Once cooled, I cut the sponge into a general camper van shape and added the jam and buttercream … and called it a night.
Day two, I started icing the cake early morning. It took 1.5kg of grey icing to cover the cake. At least now I had a fair idea how big the final cake would be. I made the headlamps, side lights, door handles, and wing mirrors as these would need to dry overnight so they would keep their shape on the finished cake. I enlisted my daughter’s help to make the VW sign for the front of the van. She had the patience to cut the shape freehand … wow! She made a fab job of it! I dusted the top half of the cake with edible silver dust for the windows.
Day three dawned, the day of the birthday celebration, and I was up early to finish the cake. I hadn’t even had chance to make his card yet!
I coloured the next layer of icing pale blue, measured and rolled it out once… twice…three times… maybe more – I lost count – I just couldn’t get it how I wanted it to look! I took a breath and went for it…not bad…could be better, but I was ok with that. I cut the top of the van freehand – it wasn’t perfect but my daughter said it looked good, so I moved on to making the tyres, windscreen wipers, etc – time was ticking after all…
By now the cake was quite heavy – it contained 1lb flour, 1lb sugar, 1lb butter and 8 eggs… and not only was there all that butter, sugar and flour in it, but I reckon there was about 4lb of fondant icing on it too!
I was on my feet for the whole day – the fiddly bits took lots of time, and I finally finished with an hour to spare. I just had time to get ready to go to Mick’s party, but I didn’t have time to make him a card! Oh my word! That’s what I do for goodness sake! My daughter said she thought he would forgive me as the cake was so special and personal to him. I was exhausted but really pleased with how it looked…
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My daughter bought sparkler candles for the cake …
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I know that Mick loved it – the front number plate said “UR 60” and the back one had his name on it. They thought the cake was too good to cut into! I finally got a text a couple of days later to say they had plucked up the courage to cut the cake, and that it tasted as good as it looked so I was a happy bunny!
Although I didn’t get to make Mick’s card, I did make a card for a friend who turned 50 recently.
I am always inspired by the beautiful projects on Jenni’s blog, and cased one of her cards, using similar colours, inking up my wedding sweet and french foliage stamp sets from Stampin’ Up with crumb cake ink.
I added a teeny tiny crumb cake bow and some rhinestones too…
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I just love these colours together – the pink goes so well with the crumb cake card and ink.
I think the card looks a little bit vintage but with a modern feel …love it!
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All papercraft supplies from Stampin’ Up!
Card recipe: cardstock: crumb cake, pretty in pink, very vanlilla; stamp sets: wedding sweet, french folliage; inks: crumb cake; accessories: crumb cake seam binding ribbon, rhinestones, glue dots, stampin dimensionals.
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Thanks for dropping by today
Lily-by-Gilly 