Bird Nest Birthday Cake

It's quite bizarre being back after an unintentional 6-month hiatus. School got in the way and I almost feel as though food blogging is just a fragment of my past. Today, everyone (specifically my demographic, ugh), takes photos of food with their fancy phones. Blogging isn't that special anymore. People want TL;DR and pictures to glaze their eyes over.

Nevertheless, the food blogging continues because I still believe that I offer a unique personality to this blog.

I got home on Friday for Spring Break, at 11pm, and the first thing my sister requests is that I make her a cake for her birthday party. She wants fairy cakes, but as one cake rather than individual cupcakes. Despite the fact that my sister, at 9, can already make pancakes, cookies, cornbread, and cake, she still asked me to bake and decorate her birthday cake (with a candle bird and nest). It's nice to get requests.

Yesterday afternoon, I used the Victoria Sandwich Cake recipe to make the cake, but since my scale is at school, I'm sure that the measurements were a little off (especially as my cake ended up much shorter than I expected). I also made some buttercream icing for the "grass" which my mum ended up scraping off and throwing away after the party was over (because no one in the family likes buttercream icing).

To sandwich the two layers, I used melted peppermint marshmallows (microwave, 30-40s) and cookie pieces. I cut some strawberry flowers because apparently, it's plausible to have a bird's nest in a meadow. The nest itself was artfully constructed out of 4 pieces of Kit-Kat, and some crushed Oreo. I added 10 blue jelly beans as eggs because my sister is turning 10. I used a fork to make the buttercream icing textured. Finally, I sifted some powdered sugar over everything.

This may be one of the prettiest cakes I've made (I still think my Portal Cake is one of the most authentic-looking ones in the world though) and it tasted pretty good too (I got a compliment from my sister's friend!). I just hope that I can avoid using buttercream icing in the future.