Nana nana nana nana BATMAN!!!

This was my first attempt at making a proper theme birthday cake and let me tell you it took all flipping night!!! The cake making was the least of it. I started off with, what I thought was enough, ready to roll icing (lazy lady's version as it is a Tuesday night and I didn't get home from work until 6.30!!) and gradually coloured it blue for the background of the cake. Man who needs kettle bells class when you can build up muscle kneading a colour in to fondant icing!! I literally was sweating by the end of this stage. Then I figured out I did not have enough to cover the damn cake so had to add more white icing (another plus to having it pre-made!) which I then had to add further blue colouring to get it to the colour I needed!

So assembly time. I got the two separate 8-inch cakes and sandwiched them together with some Betty Crockers chocolate fudge buttercream (again pre-made but please refer to above reference to Tuesday!). Then I discovered I needed to coat the cake with something to make the roll icing stick, such as Apricot jam. PANIC......I do not have any Apricot jam!!!! Found raspberry jam and felt this would suffice......and I was right! 

Rolled out, now vibrant blue, icing to cover cake and gues what??? I had LOADS. Chipical (as they say in Clonmel!). So trimmed nicely around the edges and made sure the icing was smooth and even. Feeling pretty proud of myself at this stage might I add!

Next comes the all important Batman symbol for the top. Contrary to my apricot jam debacle, I had done my research on a template for the correct Batman symbol and luckily I had small and large versions, as this cake was smaller then I had thought! So I reverted back to my "How-Do-You-Do" days (for all you 80's Irish kids out ther!) and got out my baking paper to trace the symbol from the sheet I had printed to this so I could see the cake through it. So I took the remainder of the blue icing (waaaaay too much blue icing) and proceeded to add black colouring to this. I thought it was going to end up navy but it didn't (fluke!). I put my Mary Fitzgerald work of art Batman symbol traced over the black rolled out icing and drew over the outline so it left an indent in the icing underneath. Then I took off paper and was able to go around the full outline with a sharp knife (always ask and adult before using such utensils!) and TA DAAAA the Batman symbol was born. I've taken proud up an notch to well chuffed with myself.

Next I got some more pre-made fondant icing and added yellow colouring to it to make the light behind the symbol. I felt it was easier, due to the stencil I had, to make a large yellow circle and place the black symbol on top instead of black circle with the yellow outline and background over it. I didn't explain that very well but I hope you get the gist of it.

I stuck the circle and symbol on with jam (raspberry of course!) and rolled a bit of left over black icing in a sausage like form and wrapped that around the bottom (to make it all profess like) and around the symbol. I threw on a number 4 as the boy the cake is for is 4 (in case ye thought it was for me) and hey presto.........

Batman Cake for Dylan Slattery's 4th Birthday