The BaKerry: A Monster for a 1 Year Old

The Project: Birthday Cake for a 1 Year Old
The Theme: Sulley from Monsters, Inc.
Ingredients:
For the Cake
20oz Sugar
20oz Margarine
18oz Self Raising Flour
2oz Cocoa
10 Eggs
For the Icing
Chocolate Butter Icing for the middle
1 pack of white roll out icing
Red Colouring Paste
Blue Colouring Paste
Black Colouring Paste
Extra cake crumbs

Firstly, let me introduce you to a the new members of my baking family, I got them for Christmas, they are going to be my assistants today.

Are they not beautiful? There is my brand new marble rolling pin, my Great British Bake Off set of scales and my Great British Bake Off gigantic mixing bowl!!

Okay, on with the cake :)

Although I was excited about doing this cake, I was also a little nervous; Sulley is incredibly fluffy, meaning the icing would need to be Butter icing and it would have to be piped to get the right effect. Piping icing isn't something that I have a great deal of experience in. The majority of my cakes have been made with Royal Icing. Overall, I'm absolutely thrilled with the results.

To make sure that the cake was completely cooled, I baked them in the morning. I made 4 circular cakes, but only used 3 and a bit plus some extra for the crumbs that I needed later.

Once cooled, they were shaped. I left two of the circular cakes whole and cut into the other cakes to make the top of Sulley's head. Then they were iced and sandwiched together.

To round off the shape a little and give it a smoother finish, I mixed together some chocolate butter icing and some chocolate cake crumbs, it plugs the gaps and sets firm for you to be able to ice on top of. I added a little extra between the two separate pieces of cake to stick them together.

Next was the messy job of colouring the icing. I needed to colour lots of butter icing to be blue (keeping it stiff enough to be piped and keep it's shape), as well as a light blue for the iris of his eye, black for his pupils and mouth, a darker blue for his nose and a red for his tongue, whilst keeping enough white back for his horns, eyes and teeth.

Then I started the icing of the cake. Firstly I covered him lightly in blue so that no gaps would show through. then I placed his eyes and mouth in place to that I new where to pipe the blue icing from. I started with the sides and worked my way around.

I found it gave a better effect by starting at the bottom of each line and layering it up to the top of the cake. It created the fur effect that I was after

Once the sides were complete, I worked my way around the face layering up the piped icing strands to look like fur and then piped around the eyes and mouth and put the nose into place. About half way around the face, my hand started to ache from holding the icing bag, although I persevered and got it done, this was the point when I decided that I totally prefer Mike Wasowski!