End of Year Parties

This photo reminds me of one of those dreams you have as a little child where the scenes from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' are real and there really are chocolate rivers. This is the selection of decorations required for my latest icing endeavour.

All the Bumble Beer's are having end of year celebrations at school. I volunteered to make six cakes for B3's party and as I had to buy a variety of sweets/lollies to make them I thought I may as well make some for B1 and B2 as well; 48 cakes in all.

It worked out surprisingly well actually and totally by fluke; B3 needed 6, there are 24 plus the teacher in B1's class and 16 plus the teacher in B2 class = 48! I only ended up making 48 as I made four batches of cake mix.

I have made various varieties of these cute cupcakes but I have never made the fish before and I think they are my favourite. Typically the range of sweets/lollies available in Guernsey is limited so I had to improvise a little but I love the result.

I was unable to find any licorice straps for the Ladybirds' heads so I had to flatten out a Licorice Allsort; it worked OK but the strap makes for a rounder head. These ones have a bit of a Vanilla Ice flat-top going on.

The dreaded Measles Bears; B2 informs me that 'They look weird Mum.'

The piggies turned out well and were the easiest to do.

I really like the cats as well. I have made these before and I prefer them with yellow eyes but I ran out of yellow jelly beans so we have one demonically possessed one in the corner.

All of these ideas came from the Women's Weekly Children Cake cookbook and are very simple and easy to adapt to the sweets/lollies there are available. It took me just under four hours to bake and ice them all; which isn't to bad for 48 cakes. I hope they are appreciated for a moment or two and then demolished with gusto ;)