What are the best cakes based on children's books?
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Version 0 of 1. Easter is nearly on us with lots of cake traditions of its own such as Simnel cake and cake shaped like doves, rabbits or basket- shaped cakes filled with eggs. But we want a cake based on a character from a book. Which characters can be turned into the best cakes? Almost any children’s book character can be turned into a cake with some judicious cutting and trimming. But some seem to be especially successful when re-imagined in cake. The shape of the character is the biggest factor. Some are much easier than others –but which ever you chose to make they all take a lot of time if they are going to look really effective. It also helps if there are some easily recognisable characteristics – Wally from Martin Handford’s Where’a Wally? is always easy to recreate with a red and white stripped bobble hat, for example. And even when you have a baked a cake that is something like the right shape, most need a bit of cake cutting and sticking to get the right shapes. Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a great favourite for cake-treatment. And it is fairly easy to pull off. It can be made very simply just by sticking together slices of Swiss roll together to replicate the caterpillar segments and slathering them in gorgeous green icing. Fixing them so that they capture the movement of Carle’s original can be a bit tricky but you could have a flat caterpillar instead! Sweets make perfect eyes and antennae. You can offset the excessive sugar by accompanying the cake with the healthier fruits that the Very Hungry Caterpillar chomps his way through in the earliest days – one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries and five oranges. Adding a serving of savoury sausage, pickle, salami and cheese – which feature among a number of other things which the Caterpillar unwisely ploughs through before collapsing, unsurprisingly with stomach-ache will make the whole feast a Very Hungry Caterpillar experience! The Reverend Awdry’s perennially popular Thomas the Tank Engine stories inspire excellent cakes for all train lovers. Train cakes look easy given the obvious Swiss roll shape of the engine and the ease with which the wheels can be replicated but creating a full tank engine complete with a cabin needs serious cake engineering. One good feature of cakes from the Thomas the Tank Engine books is that the different engines can be easily distinguished just by their icing. Blue icing for Thomas, green icing for Henry and red icing for James is all you need to create a very impressive goods yard. The best-selling Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler is a great cake favourite. And there are many recipes for him! Check out the official Gruffalo site one here, it recommends a simple sponge cake which can then be shaped into the Gruffalo’s face, covered in delicious and convincing chocolate icing – roughed-up rather than smoothed down. As with adding the facial features of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the addition of sweets to make the teeth, eyes, nose and horns works perfectly. Or you could attempt more ambitious 3D cake in which a model of the whole Gruffalo – heads, body and legs is made and then covered in chocolate icing which holds the whole thing together! For absolute simplicity, no book is more obviously represented by cake that Roald Dahl’s Matilda. It has to be large and will need copious quantities of chocolate icing to look effective. But that is all. The only think against it that it the eating of it is devised as a punishment which might take the edge of your celebration… When it comes to it, eating the cake is often not as popular as the wow factor of its appearance or the fun factor of making it. So, it is not just the delight in the cake can that be enjoyed. For background reading, before the making even begins – or after the cakes have been enjoyed - the process of making cakes, and other kinds of baking of all kinds, is joyfully celebrated in several titles. In Joyce and Polly Dunbar’s Pat-A-Cake-Baby there is very, very messy stirring, whisking and baking take place through the night. For the babies it is all just good fun and a lovely way of making a moon-offering. In Mini Grey’s Biscuit Bear creating a lively circus of biscuit performers is a work of art in itself, while protecting them and saving himself shows courage and tenacity; baking is about survival! The array of cakes and patisseries which the cat and his mice accomplices bake secretly night after night in Posy Simmonds’ wonderfulk Baker Cat is truly mouth watering. Few would attempt to try them at home but the excitement of their production and the way it saves the cat and the mice from a cruel end as they trick the mean minded baker and his wife is a delight. And don’t miss out on Maurice Sendak’s classic In the Night Kitchen. Do you have a question for the Book Doctor? Email childrens.books@theguardian.com or pose it on Twitter @GdnchildrensBks, using #BookDoctor. If you are under 18 and not a member of the Guardian children’s books site join here, we’re packed full of book recommendations and ideas. And don’t forget to send us photos of your bookish cake creations! |