Yesterday I played with beavers.....

That sounds so wrong on so many levels, but it is the truth! What's this got to do with cakes? well, everything the cake on order was a Beaver Dam birthday cake. So, I spent the morning making beavers out of chocolate marshmallow fondant (of course I made the choco-MMF the previous night) and then a gazillion sticks and logs too! This was a fab cake to do, not only because I'd never been asked to make one like this before but also there are not many images of beaver dam cakes out there so much of this was my own idea - believe me, 'google' beaver cake and see what hits you get.

***Disclaimer*** I take no responsibility for the content that the google hit will give on that search!

Whilst modelling the beaver heads out of fondant, I learned that I can actually do Pooh Bear, Arthur, cows, pigs and a big toe so a very successful morning! With the heads, bodies (with limbs) and big criss-cross tails complete I spent the next 4 hrs at the pool - well it's Georgia and 36ºC, kids are off school and going bananas in the house as I'm fiddling with fondant! I did give in and give them some to play with though. Sophie made an eye-pod (copied from a birthday card I bought but don't tell her I remember that!) and Jessica made beavers on their bellies swimming which look really good but .... bad mother alert... not good enough to put on a cake that someone's paying for! So, today we're (Jessica and I) making another cake for her to put her beavers on, thankfully it's father's day tomorrow.

Anyhoo, here's a pic, or 2 of the beaver dam cake.



It's a 10 inch marble cake filled with vanilla buttercream and iced in buttercream, piping gel for the water and chocolate marshmallow fondant for the beavers & logs.

Underneath the mango tree....

No, you'll be pleased to know that no eyesight or indeed white bikini's were abused in the making of the following cake productions, lol.

A friend dropped round a whole load of mangoes and after we'd had them in a fruit salad, smoothied them, diced them to make salsa, the only thing left to do with them was make cakes - or rather mango (with a hint of lime) buttercream atop some spiced cupcakes.

With the cupcakes baked and cooled x 12 and a little 6" round to make cake balls or bites if you prefer, it was time to get the mango buttercream on the go.

Mango Buttercream

1. 2-3 yellow ripe mangoes, diced
2. juice of one lime

Heat the mango with lime juice over a medium heat until the mango softens and easily breaks down with a wooden spoon - depending on how ripe the mango was to begin with this will be around 5 minutes-ish, any longer and the fruit wasn't ripe enough :-(

Blitz in a blender until smooth and leave aside to cool.

3. Buttercream - I use the easy 1 part butter to 2 parts icing sugar (powdered sugar if you're in the US) with a few drops of vanilla extract and beat the bejesus out of in the kitchen aid.

Add in the cooled mango purée until it's all smooth and then add more icing sugar until you've got the right consistency and pipe away!




Of course the orange and yellow non pareils are not essential but....


And for the cake balls... I had my 2 trusty assistants helping with these today (7 weeks and 6 days until the summer holidays are over), so go easy on any critiques! They had the job of rolling the cake balls and then dipping them and covering them in the chocolate (for anyone not in the know, a cake ball is crumbled up cake mixed with buttercream (or any frosting for that matter) and dipped in chocolate). My job was to scoop them out again and shake the excess 500g of chocolate off of each of them! Still it passed an hour or so, well 3 if you count clean up but I got to do that part alone.