A 13th Birthday #theGallery

Today, J turned 13 years old and officially became a teenager. We got up this morning, wished him a happy birthday and he opened his card and present (that I told him I hadn't been to get yet - you've got to keep them on their toes) before he headed off to school. I can't believe I have two teenagers!

And what is a birthday without cake! I have been deliberating over what cake to make him for a few weeks. I considered things like boxing gloves or a boxing ring as I didn't want to make another football cake (he's had football themed cakes for the past three years - a football player in his old team colours with matching cupcakes, a football pitch and an England football shirt to be precise) and eventually settled on an XBOX controller. It was fun to make & not too technically difficult - luckily for me - and I am really pleased with the end result.

I started off with two layers of a square plain vanilla sponge cake, and then sandwiched them together with raspberry jam & vanilla buttercream, before shaping the cake using J's XBOX controller as a guide.

After shaping, I dirty iced the cake with more vanilla buttercream and then placed it in the fridge overnight to chill.

I bought black and white fondant icing to use for covering and making the decorations, and then coloured the white icing with gel colours for the buttons and simply mixed the black & white together to make grey, and I spray painted a ball of grey fondant with Dr Oetker silver shimmer spray for the centre X button.

You could cover the XBOX controller in either black or white fondant, or even green, but for ease I decided on black and grey and I am really pleased with how it turned out as it has been a while since I made a proper birthday cake - fingers crossed J will like it too.
In addition to the little extras of buttons and control pads, I made J's name & age out of sugarpaste (yesterday, & left them overnight to harden) to add the finishing touches to the cake.

I have linked this post with #theGallery at The Sticky Fingers Blog.