This year, Miss just turned 6 requested an owl themed birthday party, along with an owl themed birthday cake. Miss 6 picked the owl cake design out on Pinterest. She also drew me a picture to go by (see below). 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) and marshmallow fondant eyes.
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 (make two batches as below):
225 g butter, softened
4 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
food colouring (red, blue and yellow)
water
Marshmallow fondant:
a handful of white marshmallows
icing sugar
food colouring (blue and black)
Additional items:
sheet of cardboard larger than the planned cake
tin foil
clear tape
1/4 cup apricot jam
1/4 cup boiling water
piping bags
star piping tip
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 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. Cut out a shape resembling Slick Slime Sam.
Cover the sheet of cardboard with tin foil and secure this in place underneath with clear tape. Transfer the cake onto the centre of this base.
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 owl belly:
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 a thin base covering of pink icing to the cake and smooth over the sides and top until cake is evenly covered. It does not have to be perfect at this stage. Place the cake in the fridge to harden the layer of icing. Make rainbow coloured icing for the owls belly. Using a butter knife, draw an oval on the owls belly and draw on a series of evenly spaced diagonal lines. Make rainbow coloured icing for the owls belly. Place each colour in a separate piping bag and cut a relatively large hole in each corner. Working from the bottom, pipe a line of dots your first icing colour along the lowest diagonal line. Using a butter knife spread the dots of icing towards the owls head. Repeat with the next colour, placing icing dots between the lines from the first colour. Repeat until the owls belly is covered.
Marshmallow fondant:
Place the handful of white 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. Split into 3 batches and add food colouring to achieve the desired colour. ‘Flour’ a board with icing sugar and kneed fondant until it reaches a good consistency to roll out. Roll our fondant and cut circles with various sized round cookie cutters.
Place marshmallow fondant eyes on the cake.
Buttercream icing:
Make another batch of buttercream icing by combining 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. Place butter cream into a piping back with a star piping nozzle. Cover the remainder of the cake with pink piped stars. As the pièce de résistance use the left over yellow icing from the belly to pipe an owl beak.
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.
Icing the cake: It is quite hard for little ones to help getting the icing on the cake, but Miss 6 is more interested in licking the spoon anyway.
Keeping Them Occupied 