Paaaartay! (as Shaggy would say)

So, our little boy has turned into a big 4 year old today. Preparations were thankfully minimal due to having his party at one of these 'play places', Jazzy Jungle, in Llandaff, where there's already somewhere for the children to throw themselves round, the food and party bags were done for us, so all I had to do was the cake! Alex has been asking for the last year if he could have a Scooby Doo van cake, so I've been researching it for a while now, to decide the best way to do it. I had to prove to myself that I could do this, without resorting to (too much) outside help. In the end, the internet came up with most of the answers, coupled with some memories of the cake Alex had for last year's birthday - made ably by Hilary.

I didn't want to post all of the pictures to Facebook, so they've only got the finished article picture. But I felt here was a more appropriate location for them.

3 layers of cake, sandwiched with buttercream icing.

Cut to shape and covered with more buttercream icing (so the fondant icing would stick).

I took this to show the streaks in the icing as I coloured it. The icing started off pale blue, and I had to add 'Eucalyptus' colour to it (which in the pot looked quite a dark blue, but did the trick). The colours in the icing at this point remind me of the colours in some of Alison's spinning and wool colours.

The icing all coloured, and not a bad match for the actual van.

Blue icing onto the cake.

With some icing embellishments.

All done by making carboard templates and cutting the icing to fit.

With jaffa cake wheels!! Roland's idea, and stuck on with buttercream,

which set overnight last night and worked very well. We had considered alternatives like liquorice wheels, but this worked fine and was easy to do.

The finished cake (well almost).

The little blue bits of icing on the board are where Alex's Scooby Doo plastic

characters were eventually stuck on, when we got to the venue.

They mostly stood up.

And the No4 candle is being a prop for the spare wheel, which wouldn't

stay where I stuck it...(made out of the orangey bit of a jaffa cake,

covered in green icing)