Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom

Another year, another birthday cake project...for the boys' 6th and 4th birthday party we went closer to having a theme than ever before: Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom (a funny, cute animated show by the makers and voices of Peppa Pig). We placed bunting around the trampoline, set up various tents and crawl tunnels to represent Gaston's cave, made elf hats simply by stapling cardboard leaves to party hats and crowns out of yellow cardboard. Our frangipani, once embellished with cardboard windows, doubled as the Great Elf Tree. Lolly bags (yes, we went there!) were filled with bug stickers, mint leaves, freckles, a jelly cup, fairy floss and a ladybird chocolate.

For the cake, I stuck with my tried and tested frozen butter cream transfer method. I spent a good couple of nights working on the different shades of icing for the picture of Ben, Holly and Gaston. Over the course of a week (an epic undertaking!) I gradually outlined and filled each character before covering the back of the transfers with the blue and green icing that would form the top of the cake.

I used the same Nigella sour cream chocolate cake recipe as in previous years. I was pleased with the results but once again cursed myself for not getting hold of a narrower tip for the finer details like the eyes and eyelashes. Learning from my last attempt at this method, I managed to get the transfers a bit thinner than the superhero transfers I made last year.

For a little variety, I made lemon butter cake mini cupcakes. Some of these were iced red and covered with upside down dark chocolate chips to suggest ladybirds, the others were iced pink and covered with upside down white chocolate chips to represent toadstools. Overall, the spread would have met with Nanny Plum's approval.