Rocket and planet cakes

It was Little FB's birthday recently and, as is tradition in our house I wanted to make him a special birthday cake. The challenge for this year was that he had a combined birthday with two of his school friends,  fantastic from an organisational point of view - only one third of the work - but lots of kids and their parents, about 70 in fact. So, a big cake, or more than one cake was needed.  Like most six year old boys Little FB has a fascination with all things SPACE. A rocket was requested. But a rocket big enough to feed 70?  I don't have an oven or cake tin big enough so I decided to make three planets so that each boy would have their own cake to blow the candles out on.

I had a lot of fun making these.  The rocket was actually very easy- it's just a rectangle cake with the top sides cut off to make the rocket nose, then the cut pieces turned upside down to make the boosters. The whole lot was covered in grey butter icing and a few red and blue lines piped on for writing and decoration. Blue sour straps were used for the nose and the portholes and I put a photo of each of the birthday boys in each. 

The planets are just basic buttercakes  (I did a marbled chocolate and vanilla version), covered with ready-roll fondant icing from the supermarket and painted with food dyes. I went for planets that looked different:  Neptune (the blue one), Earth (hopefully this one is recognisable!) and Jupiter (the red one).

When the time came to blow out the candles we stuck some sparklers in the back of the rocket, lit the candles in each cake and had blast off!!

My creative space: sewing karma restored

I found a way to get over my bad sewing karma of the past few days: Patchwork.  Always guaranteed to cheer me up and provide a good sewing fix. I think  it's something about putting all those brightly coloured fabrics together.

I decided to learn something new and followed this great tutorial to make a wonky star.  I wanted to use some of the Outfoxed fabric and it seemed right to pair it with Autumnal oranges browns and purples; appropriate now that we have officially reached the end of summer.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the block but I added a border of small squares and it will now be a cushion for the couch on the front  porch.

Find out what others have been doing in their creative spaces here.