I have spent many happy hours making novelty birthday cakes for my grandchildren. In those days I actually mixed my own fondant icing,using glucose and icing sugar. Nowadays you can buy the  icing ready-made,so its a lot easier. You dont even have to bake the cake-you could easily use shop-bought slab cake. As it has to be cut up and built into fancy shapes,there could be a waste of good cake if you arent careful.


The biggest cake I ever made was for our Street Party,on the day of the wedding of Charles and Diana. I chose to make St. Pauls Cathedral,and to feed everybody it had to be BIG! It stood on our kitchen table,& filled up most of the space. It was rich fruit cake,and I baked it in sections. The dome was cooked in a pudding basin, the pillars at the porch were sweet cigarettes,& I made the pigeons and statues from piped royal icing. The windows all bore the initials of the happy couple. We were in all the local papers!


However, there are much simpler subjects for your novelty cake. Jamie's 'Macdonalds' was simply 2 sponge cakes, fondant-covered,filled with marzipan cheese-slices and lettuce,beef, beetroot and tomato all modelled from coloured fondant. You can be brave with the food colouring; mix it like watercolour-small quantities, of course.


Noah's  Ark was covered with butter-icing: the stuck-on planks were wafer-biscuits, and the raging sea was made with generous amounts of highly coloured butter-icing,which was a particular favourite of the boys. The animals were from Woolworths(however do we manage without that wonderful store?)


See if you can work out how this one was made! More about cakes another time.....