A special cake for a special girl

This week I have been busy baking and making all sorts of things out of sugar.
I wanted to do something special for my daughter on her 18th birthday as she has been home-bound for the last 3 years due to health issues. she has missed out on so much and I knew this would be yet another birthday spent at home.

 It's taken me all week to do the preparation work around caring for her and the rest of the family but I managed to finish it just in time. I am so pleased you can prepare for most cakes ahead of time. Here is some of my prep work. Lots of sugar but I know it won't all get eaten. This cake is all gluten free too as my daughter also has Coeliac disease.

The finished cake all came together for her birthday. It's nowhere near perfect but my daughter was happy so it did what it was supposed to do. It is designed to lean like this as it's inspired by Alice In Wonderland!

'Drink me' and you will be transported into a magical topsy turvy world!

My daughter has autism and ME/CFS amongst many other things but she is also quite eccentric in her ways. This cake sort of suits her personality and the world she lives in most of the time.

My favourite part of this cake has to be the cup and saucer which I made from flower paste so that I could make it thin enough to look like china. I used a small china coffee cup and saucer as a mould and then rolled some of the same type of icing between my hand and twisted it a little to make the handle. 

There is no front view to this cake. With all the  topsy turvy layers I had to take photos from all sides. My daughter asked me to take some photos of her cake so that she had something to keep forever. I thought that was rather sweet but to be honest, I would have taken some photographs anyway but just with my mobile phone as I had the prep work.

I wasn't going to make the caterpillar with his hookah pipe but I was told by my son that I had to!

Alice in the daisy field.

I made four layers, all at different angles to make it different, a little like my family :) In a good way of course :)

The soldiers.

My children came up with many of the ideas you see on this cake. I just had to try to make them happen. It was decided that it would be nice to make both white and red roses as the Queen in the story wanted red roses and ordered them to be painted. On the left side of the picture below is a paint pot and brushes. Another idea thanks to my children. Mind you, son No. 2 was no help at all as he kept telling me everything was the wrong colour! Autism......nothing is ever perfect!

I will remember this day not for the cake but the look on my daughters face when she saw it complete. That is priceless and made it all worthwhile. 

Copyright Jana Eastwood