Gotta Catch 'Em All!

A while ago I promised by best friend Caz that I would make her a cake for her birthday. As I usually do, I filed this away in my brain as something to think about closer to the time. Well, her birthday kind of crept up on me and it wasn't until the day before that I checked she still didn't have a cake. The problem wasn't the baking of it but more having the time to pick up the things I needed for decorations whilst revising for exams and going to university. Sometimes I am just far too unorganised.

The plan was to make a vanilla sandwich cake (two cakes with buttercream 'sandwiched' in the middle) with a Pokemon design. Various designs ran through my head the evening before her birthday but I settled on one I knew she'd love. A Charmander. 

How to do it though? It took a while but I eventually found a simple and printable outline that I was able to cut out and use as a template to create the design.

The next day, I realised I had a 3 hour window in which to bake and decorate a cake, as well as get myself ready. I decided to stick with a plain vanilla cake, that way there's more focus on the design of the cake as well as it being a no fail recipe. 

With the cake made and cooling down (admittedly it did have to spend some time in the fridge) I moved onto getting the decoration ready. A vanilla buttercream was deemed a good, and tasty, option as it would allow the decoration I bought to stick to the cake. "What was that decoration?" you ask....dried apricots. Stay with me on this one, it does work I promise.

After spreading a generous layer of thick buttercream (just the way I knew Caz likes it), I placed the cut out on top of the cake. I needed something that would make a dark outline on the cake that I could fill in with the apricots to make Charmander actually look like Charmander. Chocolate buttercream was the obvious choice but I decided to give it a bit of a twist. Rather than using cocoa powder, I poured melted milk chocolate into the icing giving it a much smoother chocolate taste. It also meant that the icing would be quite solid and there was less danger of it running all over the cake. 

Once the outline was in place I took the template off the cake and used it to cut some of the apricots into shape, a bit like making a jigsaw puzzle. I placed each apricot with care, finishing the design off with a little blue icing for the eyes and placing candles near the mouth and tail. The idea behind the candle placement was in the hope that once lit in a dark room, it would look like this little character looked like a fire breathing dragon. 

Everything was fine, until halfway to my friend's house the buttercream began to melt! Ditching the Boyfriend with the presents, I ran to party barely saying hello before hurtling into the kitchen and immediately popping  Charmander in the fridge. My poor friend had to look at her cake by standing with the fridge door only slightly ajar in an attempt to keep as much cold around the cake as possible. 

I'm pleased to say that Caz loved her cake, although it did take a while to finish it off. 

Feliz cumpleaños Carolina!!