In The Night Garden Cake - Happy 2nd Birthday Alfie x

I've been waiting to make a children's birthday cake for ages and the time has finally come.  Yesterday was our friend Sacha's nephew's birthday and he had an In The Night Garden party at the weekend.  So of course the cake had to have Upsy Daisy, Igglepiggle and the Tombliboos Unn, Ooo and Eee.  If you don't have kids then those names probably mean as much to you as the names of deep sea amoeba translated into Russian but these happy characters are more famous than the Queen to most 2 year olds. 

 

Originally I had planned to cover the whole cake and board in green sugarpaste, but the green paste has very high levels of colourings and as it's for children a better idea was to cover it in white first, and then just use a very thin layer of green on top and for a grass effect round the outside:

This was a great backgound to add the characters.  I had been introduced to the crazy world of In The Night Garden when our good friends Sheena and Nathan came to stay with their gorgeous little boy called Murphy.  He's only a few months old but it's his favourite TV programme, he loves it!  So I had seen a couple of episodes of the show, but had to do a bit more research into who everyone was.  The In The Night Garden website is great, so I had it open on the laptop by the side of where I was decorating the cake.  The only problem is that the website has random snorting and farting sound effects that play every so often which was a bit off putting....

I started with Upsy Daisy as she's the most complicated.  I think it actually took me longer to mix up all the different colours than it did to put the character together!  I must remember how long it takes and build that in if I'm doing another cake with lots of colours. 

It took me a while to get the face right, for some reason the eyebrows kept making her look evil! 

Next up is Igglepiggle, which was much easier, as he's only 2 colours:

I think the blanket stitching detail helps to finish him off as he could end up looking too plain next to Upsy Daisy.

Then to add the Tombliboos:

And lots of handmade daisies:

I finished the cake off with a piped message and a glittery 2 and it was done:

Happy Birthday for yesterday Alfie, hope you enjoyed the party xxx