Blue Flower Birthday Cake

For my Mum’s birthday this year we thought we would pay her a surprise visit. My Dad was in on the secret and had to manoeuvre her round to deciding that it would be better to go out for dinner instead of the lunch that she had planned, as it was the last day of the school term and we couldn’t get there in time for lunch.

So I thought it would be a good idea to take a cake. My Mum’s not really a “pink” person and her favourite colour is blue so I went with blue flowers.  My Dad suggested a vanilla cake with jam and vanilla buttercream so that’s what I made. I covered it with white sugar paste and made blue sugar paste flowers. I wanted an asymmetrical look that gave the impression of scattered flowers. I had a jar of pink and white sugar balls and picked out the pearly white ones to put in the flower centres. I initially thought I would only put them in the larger flowers but on reflection put one in each flower.

My parents live on the Isle of Wight so we drove to Southsea to the hovercraft and my Dad came to pick us up. We purposefully arrived when my Mum would be out so that she really would have no idea we were there. My Dad had managed to keep the secret so well that he had even forgotten we had arranged I would bring a cake: my mum had already made herself one, a “bakewell” sponge (which is delicious and I hope to make one and post about it soon!). We selflessly ate a large portion of that while we were waiting for her return, just to avoid them having too much cake to eat when we had gone.

My nearly 8 year old was beside himself with excitement at this point at the lovely surprise(!) Nana would have and could hardly contain himself when she walked through the door. And she was most definitely surprised, and we hope pleasantly!

Categories: Baking, Birthday cakes, Cakes

Tags: baking, birthday, birthday cake, cake, flowers, frosting, gifts, icing, vanilla