A Tale of Two Cakes - Cake 1

Cake 1 is Aditi's cake, made for her third birthday on December 6th, a simple, delicious vanilla cake, with a hint of lemon, frosted with a rich buttery vanilla buttercream frosting...

and

... decorated to look like Binoo from Toopy and Binoo. Oh dear :-)

For those of who have never heard of Toopy and Binoo, enjoy the blissful ignorance of TV's most annoying lead character. For those of us who are suffering, here is the recipe for the cake and the buttercream frosting to make them palatable!

I needed the cake not to rise too much, as I was making it to cut into the shape of Binoo's head. After a long time of looking around, I settled on the Joy of Baking recipe, as it seemed like it was a denser cake than, say, an angel food cake. The only departure I made from the original recipe is that I added a teaspoon of lemon zest to the vanilla mixture to add some depth and a hint of citrus to the cake. It did make a big difference to the flavour, and made the cake adult friendly too. It worked brilliantly and there were happy faces and tummies all around.

I admit I was blackmailed into making and decorating the cake in that stupid cartoon character's shape, with Kay going on about how it was important to make memories that would last. I thought a easy chocolate cake would do the trick. But I allowed myself to be coerced into making the cake, and I must admit the look of wonder and awe on her face was worth every second of the staying-up-till-midnight-to-decorate-a-silly-cake-tiredness :-)