Rocket Ship Cake

Baby Ted has rocket ship wall paper all over his bedroom. So his mum wanted to have a rocket ship cake to celebrate his first birthday! She wanted a cheerful cake, with happy colours, and here's what I came up with.

Rocket Ship Cake

I baked three, 9" x 12" layers of Devil's Food cake first. And then, I drew out the shape of rocket ship on a piece of cardboard, making sure to check that it would yield a cake large enough to serve all the guests. I covered the board with foil, and then used it is as a guide to cut rocket ship-shaped cakes from the baked layers.  I didn't carve the top layer and round out the cake, as Ted's mummy wanted a "flatter" rocket ship.

how to cut the cake to serve 20 guests

Each layer was filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache, with a vanilla buttercream dam around to prevent the filling from oozing out. After the cake was filled and dirty iced, I let the whole thing chill until firm in the fridge before covering it in fondant. 

whipped dark chocolate ganache filling

The cake was covered with fondant, piece, by piece, starting with the "flames". In hindsight, it probably would've been easier to cover the cake with one large piece of green fondant first, and then add the other colours on top, but then I didn't want to have too many layers of fondant on cake, cuz it would be too thick, and too sweet. 

fondant-covering, in progress

I made little moons out of the cake scraps as well, using a circle cutter and then carving the top layer a little to round them out. After crumb coating these little cakes, I covered each in orange fondant and used a ball too to make craters on the moons, in the same way as this Space Angry Birds cake. 

dirty iced cake moons

I added a belt of stars on the cake, as well as a couple of round windows on the top and the sides of the cake, because it's these little details that really made the cake pop. I added a fondant cut-out flame at the back of the rocket ship because the shape of the flame got lost a little after covering it in fondant.  

fun space scene

The cake would have looked great just on a plain silver cake board with a hand-written Happy Birthday message, but I just couldn't help myself and I just had to go ahead and decorated the cake board too! I covered the board with dark blue fondant, and then dotted on stars using a toothpick dipped in white food colouring. 

love the craters on the cake moons

To finish the cake, I cut out fondant letters for the Happy Birthday message using some letter cutters. Thankfully, I managed to squeeze them on the corner of the cake board!

colourful fondant letters

The rocket ship cake looks like a pop-up cartoon scene! The decorated cake board really adds a lot to the final look of the cake. I loved the look on Ted's mum, dad and sister when they saw this cake! They totally loved it! And seeing happy, excited faces makes me happy. This is why I love love love making cakes! Happy 1st Birthday, Ted!

Birthday cake, blast off!!