Rex.

Well, last year it was a pirate cake. This year he announced that he wanted a dinosaur cake. Specifically, Rex from Toy Story.
So here's a little outline of how it went. First, bake a cake in a sort of A4 sized tin. Just did an all-in-one sponge myself (Delia's, if you must know...) for this purpose. Then, draw a template on a bit of A4 paper. Look at the template, appear shocked at your own lack of artistic prowess, get another piece of A4 and try again. Finally, after a few tweaks, and some internet based research, you'll have a template you can show in public. Place this on top of the cake. Sorry this first photo's upside-down. Wasn't really thinking at the time.

Next, get a sharp (and, ideally, quite narrow) knife and start cutting out the template. You'll notice that the tail on the template is somewhat foreshortened. This is because I was intending to salvage a bit of cake from the offcuts to form into a tail. In fact, in this second picture, you can see the gap where the tail has been taken from. If I was thinking, I'd have cut the tail the other way, so that it was the same way up as the body. But I wasn't, so it wasn't...
When you've finished that part of the operation, you'll hopefully have something that looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a lizard who's shed its tail. I have to confess I didn't really try to make 'hands' for Rex's front limbs. Neither the knife nor the cake looked like they were going to be up to that sort of detail.
It's now ready to be transferred to its final resting place. In this case, a chopping board covered in tinfoil. Classy stuff. At this point, add the tail. (see - it's the wrong way up...)This is the fun bit. Make some green icing. Now, I looked at the green colouring and thought to myself that it would be pretty easy to get it to Rex-green. However, I ended up emptying the bottle into the icing and it still wasn't green enough. I tried a few drops first, then a lid full, then another, then just tipped the remains of the bottle in. Still ended up with a bit of an insipid outcome. Hey ho.
Start slopping the icing onto the cake in vast swathes. It's not exactly for the faint-hearted, this cake. Obviously, at this point it would be a shame to find out that you've not made enough icing, as colour matching is notoriously difficult at such times. I went the other way and hopelessly over catered. Thankfully, one of the birthday party activities was cake decorating, so it didn't all go to waste.
Once you've finished off the icing all over bit, add some detail. This is another stage where my lack of artistic finesse worked against me, but I think that you can probably get the general impression that it's supposed to be a dinosaur. If you're wondering what on earth is going on with the '4' in the top right, it's because Joshua doesn't actually like icing (ironic, I have to admit) and so asked for a bit without icing. I didn't really want a 'bare' bit of dinosaur, so opted for creating a '4' out of off cuts, and holding it together with a bunch of skewers.
And there you have it. A Rex cake. In fact, one of the kiddies said, as I put the cake down, 'it's a dinosaur' (cue sigh of relief from me). Another kid responded, "it's Rex" (cue declarations of undying love from me!). Top of the class boy, well done.


As it happens, it was a year ago today that I wrote,
"I'm seriously considering starting a blog called 'man made' to start to try and balance the approximately 40 billion blogs out there that are craft by women for women - or at least with the assumption that only women will be interested :)

Sadly, if I did start such a blog, I think it would only be read by women..."

Here it is :o)