Apparently, according to Miss 5, baby brother’s like shark birthday cakes. So that is what we made for a certain someone’s first birthday celebration. Much like Miss 5’s birthday cake, we made an extra large banana cake based on the Edmond’s recipe, covered it with buttercream icing (also based on the Edmond’s recipe).
Ingredients:
Banana cake:
250 g butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
4 free-range eggs
5 large bananas mashed
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking soda
4 cups self raising flour
Buttercream icing:
225 g butter, softened
4 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
yellow food colouring
water
Marshmallow fondant:
a handful of white marshmallows
icing sugar
Additional items:
1/4 cup apricot jam
1/4 cup boiling water
some skittles
Instructions:
Banana cake:
Preheat oven to 180°C (356°F).
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add free-range eggs one at a time, and beat in. Add in mashed banana and combine.
Sift flour into a large bowl, and make a well in the centre.
Boil milk in the microwave and immediately add the baking soda. Stir to froth up.
Pour frothy milk and other wet ingredients into the centre of the dry ingredients and fold together. Pour 2/3 into a round cake tine and the remainder into a large rectangle cake tin (we used an oven roasting tray) lined with baking paper.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for about 50 minutes. Allow cake to cool. From the rectangle cake, cut out some triangles for shark fins.
Arrange the cake ‘fins’ around the circular ‘shark’ cake.
Combine 1/4 cup of apricot jam and 1/4 cup of boiling water. Using a pastry brush, brush the cake, especially the cut edges with the mixture. This will reduce the cake crumbling as you apply the icing.
Buttercream icing:
Combine butter and icing sugar and vanilla essence in food processor and beat until combined. Add food colouring and mix until you achieve the desired colour. You can add a little water (or milk) to achieve the desired consistency.
Apply the icing to the cake and smooth over the sides and top until cake is evenly covered with icing. Dipping the spreading knife in boiling water can help to smooth things out nicely. Edges can be cleaned up with a damp cloth.
Marshmallow fondant:
Place the handful of marshmallows in a bowl and microwave until they puff up. Take them out of the microwave, and mix to combine melted marshmallows. Gradually add icing sugar until mixture comes together enough to kneed. Flour a board with icing sugar and kneed fondant until it reaches a good consistency to roll out. Roll our fondant and cut two circles with a cookie cutter and a shark mouth.
Place marshmallow fondant eyes on the cake and add skittle pupils with a little icing on the back to make them stick. I pressed some teeth into the mouth with the back of a knife, then I added a few yellow skittles on the back of the shark to give him some character.
What the kids can do:
Hand washing: Don’t forget to get the kids (and grownups too of course) to wash their hands before you start. Little hands always seem to end up touching everything, including the ingredients. This is extra important given the current Covid-19 situation. For good 20 second hand wash, have them sing “happy birthday to me” twice.
Eggs: Pro tip for breaking eggs with a 5 year old, break eggs into a separate glass bowl before adding to your other ingredients. That way you can see and pick out any bits of shell before they are added in by mistake. I like to use free range eggs, because it is kinder to the chickens, and they also taste better. Bear in mind that raw eggs can carry Salmonella so wash little hands if they end up the raw egg. I also don’t recommend eating raw cake batter, just in case.
Mixing the ingredients: My daughter likes to help using the food processor to mix all the ingredients. Bear in mind that little hands can fit down the shoot of the food processor, so always supervise this step. The biggest messes seen to happen when sifting and mixing dry ingredients with the kids. A great tip from reader Dana M is to put a towel down underneath, which catches any stray ingredients for easy cleaning. When folding wet into dry ingredients, you want to mix thoroughly, but not too much or the cake will go flat. This usually requires the grown up to either finish off the mixing and/or intervene before things are mixed too much.
Mr 1 has yet to figure out blowing out candles, so to her delight, Miss 5 showed him how to do it for next time.
Keeping Them Occupied 