Hey Diddle Diddle

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle, 

the cow jumped over the moon.  

The little dog laughed to see such fun

and the dish ran away with the spoon.

When my sister in law called me about doing my nephews 1st Birthday Cake I was so excited.  I knew right away that I wanted to do a Nursery Rhyme Cake and she was kind enough to give me free reign with the design.   I wanted this cake to have a story book effect.  After painstakingly stalking the internet for ideas I came across the Hey Diddle Diddle motif Baby China from my old employer Tiffany & Company.  I instantly loved the characters and decided this was it.

I printed off and cut out the images then traced them as best I could onto my fondant.  Then painted the cutouts with dusting powders mixed with a bit of vodka.  I then placed each cut out onto a round fondant plaque decorated with cloud and moon motifs as if the characters where all floating in the sky in a child's dream.  I used a black food colouring pen to trace over the cutouts to give it a story book artwork feel.

The biggest challenge for me with this cake was the writing.  The cake itself was mostly buttercream apart from the fondant plaques so the writing needed to be piped buttercream.  Unfortunately piped writing is not one of my strong points and as an additional challenge the writing needed to be spaced perfectly to fit right around the cake.  To do this I made a template in powerpoint and used wordart to type the nursery rhyme in a circle.  I then drug the circle to the size it needed to be to fit my cake and lastly inverted the image before printing it out.  I then placed a piece of parchment paper over the printout and piped the design onto the parchment paper in the same colour as my iced cake.  I then turned the wax paper over and aligned it on top of my cake, piping side down.  Then used a brush to gently trace over the writing and then lifted off the parchment paper.  This transfers the writing from the parchement paper onto the cake.  Once the transfer was on the cake I then over piped the message in yellow. The only thing I would change is once it was done I wished I had chosen black for the writing.  But it was so time consuming up to that point I wasn't about to do it over just to change the colour, so yellow it is.

Overall I was very pleased with the outcome and since we went to this party I can honestly say it tasted lovely as well.  If you are looking for an incredible tasting sponge try Jane Ashers recipe found here. Follow the instructions to the T and get ready for a treat.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.