Spiderman Cake

What birthday cake do you make for a child who’s obsessed with superheroes? A Spiderman cake of course! Oliver had a Spiderman cake for his 3rd birthday last year, but I bought that one from Sainsburys! I’ve made a few fancy birthday cakes now so a few months ago, I asked him what birthday cake he wanted for his 4th birthday. I wasn’t surprised when he said he wanted a Spiderman cake again. 

I spent hours on Pinterest looking at different cake designs. Have a look at my birthday cake ideas board if you want a few ideas. I didn’t want to make anything too difficult… I know my limitations! I really liked the Spiderman face design so thought I’d go for that.

Anyway, if you want to have a go yourself, here’s how I made it. Sorry I didn’t take any photos but I was a bit stressed!

• The cake is made with my Victoria Sponge cake recipe
• When the two layers are completely cooled, sandwich them together with raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream.
• Cover the cake with a thin layer of buttercream and make it as smooth as possible. Put in the fridge for a couple of hours {or overnight if you have time}
• Cut a 3.5cm {1.5 inch} strip out of the middle of the cake and push the two halves together to make the oval shape
• Cover the cake in red ready-to-roll icing, cut off the excess and smooth it all down with a cake smoother tool
• Score lines on the cake with a skewer or wooden toothpick. Use an image of your choice to copy the Spiderman design or use this one that I used.

• Using a tube of black writing icing, draw lines where you have scored.
• Make a template out paper for the shape of the eyes. 
• Roll out some black ready-to-roll icing, place the templates on it and cut round the templates.
• Roll out some white ready-to-roll icing, place the templates on it and cut round the templates. Then cut off approx 3cm’s round the edge of the white piece so that it’s smaller than the black piece. 
• Stick the white piece on top of the black piece using a small amount of water to stick them together.
• Place them carefully on the cake. You won’t be able to re-position them as if you move them you will smudge the black lines {I make these mistakes so you don’t have to!}
• If you want to, you can cover the cake board with blue ready-to-roll icing and score lines on it to make a ‘brick wall’ design {you can just see them in the photo} then pin a black ribbon round the edge. I also personalised it with Oliver’s name and age on the cake board.

In typical Debra fashion I left it till the last minute and was rushing to finish it {due to one of the cakes sinking so I had to make another!} I did the cake board the day before and in hindsight, I should have made the eyes and letters in advance too so they had time to harden. Icing is much easier to work with when it’s gone hard!

All in all I was delighted with it. And for someone who’s been baking for less than a year it’s a pretty good achievement! Oliver and his friends loved it which is the most important thing. I must admit a nearly shed a tear when it was being cut up as I only finished it 3 hours earlier!