She wants this one ....

OK, I don't have kids, but I can just imagine how many times you moms hear that ...

"I want that one".

I got a call from a friend of mine a few weeks ago ... her daughter's birthday party was coming up, and she needed to finalise the cake ... and of course - she wants that one.
She made it sound very complicated, so I was really quite nervous to see this cake I was being asked to reproduce.
So, the colour photocopy was hand delivered to my house, and this is what I found inside:


Not so bad, I thought.
I was clearly relieved! I've been asked for Pirate Ships before (no, I didn't do it - are you mad!), so this was great.

Now, we must understand that this picture is copied from a Donna Hay cookbook, in other words, it comes from Australia.
And of course the cake is wrapped in Musk Sticks ... never heard of them in my life before - seeing as how we're sitting in Cape Town, sunny South Africa.
So that was challenge number one.

I had to go on a shopping expedition to see what else we could find here that would work.

Pink Boudoir Biscuits?
Possibly, but I was worried about them getting soggy.



Fizzers? Would have been my choice, but can you just imagine all those sticky little fingers! Mom didn't go for that option ... lucky me, I didn't have to unwrap 50 Fizzers!



I liked the look of these guys, but I nearly broke my tooth on them, so thought best not to go with this one for health & safety issues - never mind public liability insurance!


Then these Strawberry Pencils could definitely have worked, but at R2 each, and being as thin as they were, it was going to make a very expensive cake! Oh, and I thought too red too...



And then I stumbled into my fabulous local Chinese shop and found these little guys.




And of course, Mom loved them.
So that's what we went with.

And with 30 kids coming to her party, I made a large square vanilla sponge cake (using twice the quantity of the recipe from Let Them Eat Cake).
And a plain vanilla butter icing and no colouring, and using yellow margarine to get that pretty creamy vanilla colour.

Attention to detail is the name of the game, you understand, so I found a beautiful pink wrapping paper and carefully wrapped the cake board.
I also edged it with a simple pink and silver edged ribbon.

The marshmallows stuck easily to the fresh, moist icing, and as soon as I was done, I put it in the fridge to firm up. They were much shorter than the Musk Sticks though, so I used one row of vertical marshmallows, and topped the cake with two rows going horizontally.

Once ready, I took a big pink bow, layered with the same pink and silver edged ribbon from the base, and wrapped them around the top edge of the marshmallows.



I couldn't resist the little pink rose to finish off the ribbon.


I have also had these mini marshmallows in my store room, from Jacqui in London (again!), and this was the perfect opportunity to use them.


I think it came out really well.
Admittedly, it doesn't look much like the Donna Hay cake, but we took the idea and interpreted it to what we have here in SA, and I think it worked.


I hope you like it?
And I hope you keep reading ...
Nicky