My 1st Novelty Cake - Mickey Mouse

Not a new make/bake - this post is about the first Novelty Cake I made.

After a few months of making sponges and things for people, I was asked to make a Novelty Cake for M's Cousins little boys 2nd Birthday. M's Aunt wanted it to be a surprise and as he was a huge Mickey Mouse clubhouse fan, she wanted it to be along that theme. As it was my first ever attempt at a proper novelty cake I wanted to keep it fairly simple so decided I'd make Mickey's Face. After hours of research online I decided to go for a Vanilla Maderia Sponge. I made one 9 inch cake and 2x5 inch ones for the ears. I wasn't brave enough to try sugarpaste icing so decided to pipe the cake with buttercream.

I greatly over estimated how much mixture I needed but the quantities I used were as follows:

Maderia Sponge Cake
Divided between 9" round tin and 2x5" round tin (plus had some spare!)

450g Unsalted butter (at room temperature)
450g Caster Sugar
8 Large Eggs (room temperature)
450g Self Raising Flour (sifted)
175g Plain Flour (sifted)
1.5 tsp Vanilla Essence
2tsp Glycerine

I creamed the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and creamy and then added the vanilla and glycerine and 1 egg at a time with a tbsp of sifted flour until they were all combined. I then added the rest of the flour and folded it in until it was combined.

I added the mixture to my times feeling quite panicked, until I was reassured by my mum that Madeira cake was a very different consistency to sponge and it was supposed to be a "heavy" mix! I then made a well/dip in the middle of the mixture and baked at 160° until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake came out clean. They were then left to cool on a wire rack.

I made tonnes of buttercream and coloured it in black and ivory and left a small amount plain. For future reference I'll stick to buying the extra strength black icing paste as I used up an entire tub! To make the ears look darker I crushed up a packet or Oreo cookies (with the middle icing removed) and then rolled and covered them black areas. I then used a large writing nozzle to ice the details (in black) and then a small star nozzle to pipe the rest of the face and the finishing touches.

I was actually really impressed with the final result seeing as it was my first attempt and more importantly so was the Birthday Boy!

The order list for cakes for birthdays seems to be increasing since this one!