The Buckbeak Cake....another year passes

The Buckbeak cake

Yes, it's that time again - Lauren's birthday. Her 9th to be precise. I have a mixture of joy as I love her dearly and dismay at how 9 years could have passed so quickly.

Anyone who has been following the blog will know that each year she sets me a challenge when it comes to birthday cakes - there's been Lightening McQueen, a page out of the Mr Men's big story book,  the Vulcan Bomber XH558 and last year a Tyrannosaurus's Head!

So when I enquired what would be needed this year I was under the impression the answer had been a round Angry Birds cake. I was laughing, a nice simple one this year.

So then, when Lauren came home from school with 1 week to go and announced "I can't wait to see my Buckbeak Cake", I broke out into a cold sweat and started panicking!

Right up to making the cake I had no idea how I was going to do it. I just bought lots of ingredients and made one large square cake and 2, 8" round cakes, all to a Victoria Sponge recipe, a chocolate one with a variety of chocolate chunks.

Using what I'd learnt last year, I fashioned the basic Buckbeak shape out of the cakes and joined the pieces together with chocolate spread (but not Nutella as unknown children will be eating).

I didn't have time to make butter cream so I used Betty Crocker's vanilla flavoured one to coat the whole cake and then some ready rolled white icing to completely cover the cake. Unfortunately the icing was in rounds so I had some joins to conceal. It was all very last minute and a bit Heath Robinson.

Next using free hand and a small metal, leaf shaped cutter (my proper cutters not having arrived yet!) I made lost of feathers. I mixed some icing sugar and water to make a glue and attached them to the cake, using them to conceal any joins.

The final stage is to mix colours of food colouring and paint the cake until hopefully it looks something like the subject. I actually think it came out looking quite good, not altogether like Buckbeak, who is much sterner than the cake.

The cake itself was a little disappointing - the round cakes were lovely and moist and chocolaty but the larger cake that I used for the head was quite dry.

However, the most important thing was that when Lauren saw it she thought it was "amazing" and that after all is all that matters.