Gloverly Cupcakes

A few weeks ago at work, David asked if I’d make a cake for his son’s birthday. Given how much he likes cake, my initial thought that it was probably for him rather than his son. And the more he told me, the more I thought that was the case – he asked for the cake to be 2 different flavours, one of which was his favourtite cake (carrot) and he then added that his son doesn’t even really like cake! Apart from specifying the flavour of the cake and saying it had to have dinosaurs on, the rest was up to me.

I had to make the cake last weekend to bring into the office on Monday. My lack of sleep during the week meant that was still exhausted when it came to making it on Sunday. I also had a really bad cold and cough, and colds and coughs do not go well with making cakes – every 2 minutes I either had to cough or blow my nose which meant I then had to wash my hands. So it took about ten times longer than it would normally. I also had a break half way through decorating which meant the icing dried out before I’d smoothed it all. In the end I was happy with the cake but it wasn’t as polished as I’d have liked and I know I could have done so much better.

My friends Nic and Sian were staying for the weekend and I knew I would struggle to make the decorations and the cake on Sunday afternoon after they’d left so I made the dinosaurs the night before while watching a film. I coloured all the icing first and then shaped the bodies, head and legs and then stuck them all together – they were similar to the dragons to make.

The large rectangular cake at the bottom was victoria sponge (one batch of the recipe here, baked in a 12×7″ tin) and the “rock” with the waterfall on was carrot and ginger cake (half of the recipe here, baked in three 7″ round cake tins). I didn’t use all the carrot cake – I started putting it on but then realised it would be too tall so I only used 2 layers.

I cut the vanilla sponge in half and then sandwiched it back together again using vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam. I then put the carrot cakes on top of one corner, offset slightly to create a stepped effect and cut off the edges so they created a straight line with the rectangular cake underneath. The carrot cake was sandwiched together and covered with orange cream cheese buttercream.

The whole cake was covered in coloured fondant icing and then decorated with the dinosaurs and tree and a few “boulders” made out of grey icing. Finally I cut out letters to spell “happy birthday André” from the left over red icing from making one of the dinosaurs. And then it was time to catch up on sleep!