Birthday cakes #1 & #2

Sorry I have been a bit quiet on the posts front over the last few weeks.

April is always a busy month in the Wood household as its mine and Alfie`s birthdays which are only two days apart.

I have been up to my eyes in planning not one but TWO parties for Alfie`s 7th birthday!!

In previous years we have planned one large event to include all of his friends and family. This culminated in a ridiculously large party last year with two joining church halls, a giant bouncy castle and over 40 kids being invited........NEVER EVER again!!

I vowed never to do a kids party on that scale again, so this year we planned two small parties; one for family and one for a few select school friends.

Of course when agreeing to two parties I completely forgot about having to make two cakes!!

Alfie is Minecraft mad and had previously asked for Minecraft themed cake, I decided to make a Minecraft cake for the party with his school friends and a chocolate overload cake for the family party.

And thanks to the help of Cake Angels and their amazing products below is my first creation.

My gorgeous birthday boy

Alfie`s second cake was going to be more of a challenge; if you don`t know what Minecraft is, its a computer game where the whole image is based around cubes with the characters and scenery all made out of squares. I had been researching cake ideas for a few months and finally found a template to go by. It seemed an easy idea to begin with but when it came to constructing the cake I realised that I may of bitten off more than I could chew!!!

The main body of the cake was going to be home made chocolate brownies and white chocolate rice crispy squares piled into a 3D scene.

The grass was the hardest aspect to create, but once I found the great piping nozzle set from docrafts it was a doddle.

The paper craft characters were a nightmare to glue together as they were so small but think that they turned out OK, don`t you???

To keep with the Minecraft theme I created personalised party bag name tags.

I wont admit this to hubby but I really enjoyed making both the cakes even though they took almost a whole week of creating start to finish and were devoured in only a few hours!!

Now to start planning my next baking mission...Benjamin`s first birthday cake next month!!