If only my friend played a drum!

A friend turned 40 last week, and as she was having a joint party with her 6 year old on Saturday, I offered to make her birthday cake.  It's no fun making your own cake...especially when you have someone elses to make as well!

Then the news came, that she was thinking of doing a 'Cello' birthday cake, as that's the main instrument that she plays (and is very good at it!).  It turned into more of an engineeering challenge, than a baking one, and inspired by the Great British Bake Off, I decided to attempt a 'Show Stopper'.

Below is a brief plan of how I went about it, just in case any mad fool is out there, googling 'How to Make a Cello Birthday Cake'!

Just in case it didn't look great, I figured it should taste great, so I used Delia's 'Chocolate Beer Cake' recipe.  I designed it round two different size circle tins, and one rectangular one.

So the first evening was logistically making a design, template, working out quantities of ingredients, and making a base big enough to hold the completed cake.  (A kitchen shelf, some florist plastic wrap and an old LP (happening to feature a cello solo of course ;-)

The second evening was the bake, only challenge here was a bowl big enough to make a triple batch of mixture and working out how to split it across the tins, to give an even height over it all.  (Thanks Alice for the lend of the Kitchen Mixer!)

The third evening was construction and decorate.  I used raspberry jam in the sandwich, and coated the whole thing with the cake recipe's covering.  However, I made one batch with plain choc, and two with milk, to have a variance of colours.  (Note to self, needed an extra batch of milk version, as a bit tight on quantity.)

The bridge was a marshmallow sweet, the knobs on the end, were also bits of marshmallow dipped in chocolate and on cocktail sticks.  And the strings were initially caramel laces from IKEA, but over night they snapped in multiple places, so I then had to improvise the next morning and cook some spaghetti and use that (this also strunk a bit during the day as it dried out, so needs some more thought...if I'm ever mad enough to do something like this again).

Thankfully it tasted good, and got great feedback on the day.

After all that, the homemade gift that I gave her seems rather simple, but I had fun making the label with my Grandma's old typewriter (planning to use that again, although a bit of a sticky 'S').

A keepsake jar,

to put art exhibtion/show tickets in

(fun to reflect on)

Old & New working in harmony