Scooby Doo Birthday Cake

I have a confession, I faked the icing on a cake. It is not like me to pass up the chance of an icing challenge, but I am trying to pace myself and not take on too much at once. I'm so glad I did it, the cake topper that I bought was fantastic, and it took a lot of pressure off an already complicated cake. I also had time to make Scooby snacks for the party as I didn't end up spending a whole afternoon icing an intricate cake design. I bought the icing topper on eBay for £3.50. Bargain.

So, the cake. I decided to try out a 3 colour sponge cake like I have seen all over the place recently. Charlotte decided on purple, orange and pink and as luck would have it my baking trays are just the right size to make an A4 cake - the same size as the icing topper. I decided to make each sponge separately (a 2 egg batch of my 5:4:4:2 mix with added vanilla), colouring the egg with my colour paste before incorporating it. I started with purple, which baked well but the colour was not very nice. I then made the orange and pink which were lovely.

I ran out of eggs, so while I was out buying more I had a re-think. Green would be easier to achieve than purple, so the 3rd sponge was a glorious froggy green. Once I had made the 3 sponges, I assembled the cake. I put home made plum jam between the pink and orange, then buttercream between the orange and green. I then put a thin layer of buttercream over the whole thing and covered it with white rolled icing.

To attach the icing topper, you have to remove it from it's plastic backing and place it on tacky icing. I slightly dampened the icing on the cake then placed the topper on top. Perfect. Unfortunately the cake was more risen in the middle, so a couple of edges rucked up a bit, but that was hidden by the piped blue icing that I put around the top and base of the cake.

I also made some Scooby snacks using my gingerbread recipe, then piping the design on top with leftover icing from the cake.