Poppy cat!

Io07

Hi
My son'd first birthday party is around the corner and I'm about to panic! Is it really neccessary to have a theme for a child this young??

He's not into TV characters. But loves Poppy cat!!! She's this sweet lil cat in his board books and he can spend a whole morning looking at them!!!

I'm totally at a loss...local cake lady quoted $45 (sorry no pound sign)....Already costing us a lot for the hall hire plus we want to invite lots of family so need the budget for food.
I've never baked a cake in my life!!!:o Help!!!
I'm terrible at organising this sort of thing!

foxwales

Get yourself some baking paper; place the baking paper over the poppy the cat book or what ever of poppy you can trace; mix up some icing suger and get yourself a piping bag that can do fine icing.

Trace the image of poppy with the icing suger; once done place in the freezer for 10 minutes to harden slightly.

Mix icing suger with food colouring to achieve the same colours as poppy the cat. Pull your template out of the freezer and fill in the gaps with the colours till you have a fully coloured in poppy the cat made out of icing suger.

Place in the freezer for about 20 minutes or until hard; pull out of the freezer and gently peel the icing suger figure of poppy away from the baking sheet and apply it to the cake using icing suger blobs to help secure it to the cake.

Job done.

Practice first though before hand; it helps

Io07

Hi
thanks for the quick reply!
I'm sorry if this sounds daft but which sort of icing sugar should I use? Just been on tesco.com and there is plain icing sugar, supercook regalice, tesci icing (fondant) and readytouse butterice...
there are icing pens there...could I use those to trace outlines? I've never used a cone.:o

foxwales

Plain icing suger will do the job; and an icing pen would work to some extent; what you need to do is when you trace the image using the icing is that there is a high enough raised outline to contain the rest of the icing suger.

Once you have the outline done; your just colouring in with the icing suger; so pretty straight forward; just take your time and practice doing just the icing and piping so you can get it right for the big day.

Krystaltips

That's a fantastic tip foxwales, might use that in the future!

Io07, Don't fret too much, at 1 your DS is not going to notice whether his favourite character is on his cake or not. For my DD's 1st birthday I bought a celebration cake from Asda, then scraped off the writing on the top and replaced it with Happy Birthday XXXXX and a number 1 candle. Last year I attempted my first ever home made cake which I thought looked a bit cobbled together but it tasted nice and it was charlottes web and she loved it. This year I was going to try and make a pony one (she's really into my little pony) but she ended up ill right before her birthday and we didn't leave the house for a week so in desperation I sent OH to Tesco and he bought their my little pony cake which she loved just as much.

I've waffled a bit... What I think the point I was trying to make was... Don't worry about the cake, it's not the be all and end all, as long as you have something to stick the candle in, it doesn't matter whether you made it yourself, spent £45 on it or bought it from Tesco for £7...

Io07

thanks krstaltips! that has made me feel a little less panicked!
i'm off to tesco this afternoon to have a look at their home -baking shelves....a whole new world for me!:eek:
for the food colouring itself should i just buy red,blue,yellow? i read on one of the other threads on here that these 3 basic colours should be enough and i can mix up to make the other shades.

foxwales

If you have the primary colours you can make almost any colour you need to.

Generally you can buy a multitude of food colourings these days; so you should be able to get what you need; if not just mix them

Krystaltips

Just be careful mixing liquid food colouring into icing sugar, it might make it too runny, just use less water to mix it with.

juliettet

Asds will put the image from the book onto an iced sponge cake cost is about £7ish for quite a large one. My friend had a photo on one recently for a 80th Birthday.

The_Good_Fairy

The best colours you can get are gel based, you'll find them in Hobbycraft, they don't water down the icing and are ususally in more gentle shades. Add the tiniest bit whichever colours you are using, its easier to add more colour than to remove it.

Good luck, don't forget to show us!