"Raa Raa you are a noisy little lion" (and a tasty one too!)
Anyone with a child under the age of 5 will most likely have had heard these lyrics on repeat as they try to distract their kids with Cbeebies.
As I (aka ‘Uncle Lea Lea’) was asked make a birthday cake for my very smushy nephew Raffi, I narrowed down the choices quickly:
- Princess castle (more for me than him, he is in-fact a 2 year old boy, and it seems I’m a 2 year old girl…)
- Thomas the tank engine (great in theory, but got way too scared about the idea of modelling a train out of icing.. and I didn’t have any blue)
- Raa Raa the lion (how hard can making a lion face be? and if it doesn’t quite come out right.. it could be any lion - especially Simba, I have a weird obsession with Simba)Â
I used a Peggy Porchen victoria sponge cake recipe for the actual cake (always adding the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture very slowly to make sure it’s light and fluffy.. and time-consuming). Once this was cooled, I whipped up some vanilla buttercream and spread it between the layers, with jam (of course) and then covered the cake.
It was time for the decorating to begin!!
Note to self, buy the icing ready coloured next time. As layer after layer came slowly together.. I started to see Raa Raa appearing and I genuinely surprised myself when the finished cake actually looked like him! And then I proceeded to look around the room.. and couldn’t actually see the floor or the table - there were cutters, boards, palate knives, butter-icing blobs, rolling pins, discarded brown sugarpaste and a trickle of edible glue.. ooops..
With no time to tidy as I finished with 10 mins before the party was due to start (and I live 15 mins away) - I rushed to the party, wheel in one hand, the other holding onto the precariously balanced cake on the seat next to me. Ignoring the small eye/nose-gouge incident in the cake box, all in all, Raa Raa and I arrived at the party in one piece. Phew.
Now 2 year old Raffi, who is just amazing (and thinks the whole family lives in his grandparents house and assumes if you’re not there you’re at work or the toilet) actually pointed to the cake, and I quote (this being one of the proudest moments of my life), ‘Raa Raa cake!’.Â
So happy birthday Raffi! I hope you have a special year ahead with your soon-to-be baby brother or sister. You may have to learn to share.
And happy blog-iversary to What Unicorns eat. We made it to a year!!
And to everyone else, happy new year from Raa Raa and I. We’re now fine friends, even though I may have eaten him.