Russian Doll cake

It was my friend Catherines birthday so I wanted to make her a special cake. Catherine has this little suitcase that she trundells between liverpool and manchester and it has little russian dolls on it so I thought that was good inspiration for a cake.

I did a bit of undercover work and found out from Catherines boyfriend that she liked chocolate cake, I needed to keep it quite simple so that I could carve the cake into the right shape so went for a generic chocolate sponge. I baked it in a square tin and carved a little doll shape out.

I made a simple chocolate buttercream and then covered it in white fondant.

I used a little paintbrush that I use for cake purposes, and used my gel colours slightly watered down to add the colour. Note the sneaky glass of wine...

I was quite scared doing the face, there would be no covering it up if it went wrong, but I was really pleased at how it came out. I used food colouring pens for the smaller details like the eyes and lips and then outlined the rest of the colour with the black food colour pen.

I bought some flower and leaf plungers so thought now was a good time to try them out. I get most of my baking stuff on ebay, it's so much cheaper, I think the flower plungers were about £4 for all four including postage. I got the leaf cutter from a shop in the trafford centre, I cant remember the name of it but its pretty much all tkmaxx homewares, an absolute dreamboat! I always thought that using plungers and cutters was a bit like cheating, but i'm a total convert, there is no point in spending absolutely ages cutting or sculpting things when you can cut it out instantly. Plus they look way better than anything I could do by hand.

By this point I was running really late to get ready for the night out so everything was pulled together pretty quickly, I glued the flowers down with some royal icing and added a little bit of glitter (of course!). I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

 As was the birthday girl! (excuse my closed eyes the flash was mega bright!)

Soph x