Birthday Cake

Here is the finished birthday cake, Round One.  I say Round One because the icing had issues, or rather I had issues with the icing, so I had another go in the morning (Round Two - final!).

From doing this cake I learnt some vital cake-making lessons:
Cake making is not as easy as it may seem.
It is all about the icing - getting the right consistency - too runny equals mess, too sticky equals hard to manage.  Either way, icing not doing what you want.  You get the idea.
Plan ahead.  I didn't think about how the icing would all work so we stuck the 1 on top of the rest of the cake, then I tried icing it all...ended up with blue 1 icing running into not-yet-set white icing.  Our cake ended up with a double lot of white icing the following morning to cover all the blueness!
Let one lot of icing dry completely before adding another!
Ice individual parts before adding them to the cake, rather than the other way around.
And the most important part: TALK TO YOUR MOTHER FIRST!  She has been there, done that and knows way more about making kids birthday cakes than me.   I could have lowered my stress levels by at least half by asking her a few questions.  This I realised AFTER I made the cake.  Duh.
And the second most important thing I learnt (or is it the first and asking Mum second?): ENJOY the experience.  Laugh.  Don't worry if it is not perfect (as my moral support kept reminding me!). 

And here is the cake on display on the day.  I must say that it is VERY tasty.  Amazing really, as I was going for a 'plain' old sponge cake.  It ended up with several thin layers of butter icing between 3 levels of sponge though, delicious, as well as the icing and lollies on top.  The lollies were our (almost) only concession to 'real' party food (the other was some chippies for Boyo!).  Boyo was creative artist.  He cut and positioned the 1, and did all the lollies.

Amy