Tom and Jerry birthday cake

A few years ago I began decorating cakes aswell as baking them.  My first ever cake was the fairy toadstool from Debbie Browns' 50 Easy Party Cakes and since then I have made everything from a 3 tier Michael Jackson themed cake to a farmyard and most recently an Ipad!


This Tom and Jerry themed cake was made for a little boys' 6th birthday and involved lots of different techniques so I thought I would share some of them in this post rather than a recipe.

I started off by sketching a few designs and eventually settled on this 2 tier cake in bright primary colours with handmade Tom and Jerry figures sitting on top.

The figures needed time to dry so I began sculpting them about a week before I made the actual cake.  I add 1 tsp of Gum Tragacanth to 500g sugarpaste rather than buying super expensive flowerpaste and have found it works just as well.  I buy white sugarpaste and colour it myself as buying lots of different colours gets expensive and leftover paste doesn't keep well.  The only colours I buy ready are red and black as these are really difficult to make.  I also made the stars which explode from the cake on wires as these needed to dry too.  \If the sugarpaste is soft the wire will just tear through it!  Simply cut out stars from sugarpaste that has been pre mixed with gum tragacanth and rolled fairly thickly.  Dip the end of a thin piece of wire into edible glue and gently push into the bottom of the star ensuring it doesn't go all the way through.  Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.

The cake itself is a vanilla madeira with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream.  As both tiers are round no carving was needed so I just levelled, filled and iced the cakes with a smooth coat of buttercream before chilling them overnight. The buttercream needs to be really firm so you can get a perfect flat surface on the cake. The next morning each tier got covered with sugarpaste and left until the evening when I finished the decorating.  I find this allows the sugarpaste to firm up so you don't get any dents or fingerprints in it.

To decorate the cake I cut large stars from yellow sugarpaste and stuck them evenly around the larger tier.  Each star was then topped with either a rice paper Tom and Jerry image or a blue sugarpaste 6.  The smaller yellow tier was decorated with a birthday message and more stars, blue this time.

To stack the cakes I placed the larger tier onto a covered cake board, attaching it using royal icing.  I then cut plastic dowels to the height of the cake and pushed 4 into the centre.  The second tier sits on top of the dowels so it doesn't crush the bottom cake.  I rolled the leftover sugarpaste into small balls and placed them around the bottom edges of the cakes in alternating colours to make a border.

Finally I stuck the Tom and Jerry figures onto the top using royal icing and inserted the star wires.  The only time consuming part of this cake was making the figures but you could always buy plastic ones to make life easier.  The rest of the decorating is fairly quick and easy yet looks super impressive!  I think it would be easy to adapt this design for any childs' birthday party by changing the colours and adding their favourite characters to the top!