Story Book Cake

The one thing that I really look forward to doing for my daughter every single day is putting her to sleep at night. No, not just because when she finally sleeps, the house is quiet at last and I get some 'me' time but because reading to her at bedtime is a routine that I simply love and look forward to all day!

The husband and I both love to read and this love for books is something that we'd like our daughter to share as well. Trips to the library, trips to the book shop, reading to her whenever she wants to listen to a story and lately, ever since the written words have started making sense, encouraging her to read are all things we do as (m)any other parent to get her to love them books.

Imagine, therefore, my delight when she asked me to make her a storybook cake for her 5th birthday.

A google search led me here and I fell instantly in love with what I saw. Come D-day and I ran out of steam - or maybe had too much of it in the kitchen given the soaring temperatures in our neck of woods - and abandoned all plans of making the chariot and the wand and so the end result is different from the one I saw on Cake Central, but the birthday girl was thrilled with what she saw and that is all that mattered!

To make this cake, I put two 10" square cakes alongside each other and sliced off about 2.5" at an angle to get the book shape. The cake is covered with fondant icing . The flowers used are store-bought, my only contribution to the flower vine are the stalks and the leaves. I used gold dust powder mixed with a few drops of water to get the yellowing pages effect - this is the only bit that I was a tad unhappy about as I failed to get a uniform look - for whatever reason, the 'paint' didn't adhere to the fondant resulting in a patchy look.

If anyone reading this has any suggestions on what I should've done, please do leave me a comment.

This, I know, is a very sketchy post, but do check out these 2 posts - Decorating a birthday cake: step by step tutorial and Cake decoration with fondant icing: a step by step guide - to know more about cake decoration.

If you have any specific questions on making this cake, do drop me a line on aquadaze{@}rediffmail{dot}com