Moon Landing Cake - Guest Blogger - Robyn Embrey

My space enthusiastic boy had a space themed birthday party when he turned five. I make birthday cakes for all of my children and while I am an amateur, the cakes turn out pretty great. When the idea of a space party came up I toyed with loads of different ideas- mirror glazes with fondant planets, double teared models of the solar system…all sorts of Bake Off worthy stuff. But then I came back to reality and decided that sometimes simple is the way, and so I made a moon landing cake and it was so quick and easy that anyone could do it. I started with a basic sponge only I baked it in a well-greased medium glass bowl rather than a cake tin, which I used to get the dome shape. I set the cake on a chopping board covered with foil because I wanted space to write his mission on the side, and I liked the spacey effect of it. Next, I used a butter cream recipe of 1-part butter to 2-parts Icing sugar which I dyed with drops of black food colouring to get the grey effect. The great thing about this cake is that it doesn’t have to be perfect, it can stand a few marks and lines, and even lumps, it doesn’t even matter if you do it fairly thick, in fact it just adds to the effect I think. Next, the fun part- I used giant white chocolate buttons to push fairly deeply into the icing to make the craters of the moon, really as many or as few as you like. Finally, with a little help from my Lego friends and a toy rocket the cake is decorated and ready. I wrote his mission on the side should he choose to accept it and it graced our buffet table, which included all kinds of spacey food, fruit rockets, alien cupcakes, the lot! It was out of this world! Our guest blogger Robyn Embrey is a mum, blogger and writer with her debut children's book coming out later this year. You can read about more of her work on her website Robyn Writes