Love a cup of tea...

Birthday season is over at our house for a while and I thought I'd go out with a bang.

This is the cake for the nine year old. Ambitious, I know, but I fell in love with a teapot in one of the cake decorating books and knew I wouldn't be content until I had done it.

Honestly and truly, it was a lot easier than it looks. If you can do playdough, you can do a cake like this.

The trick is to start early - don't try to do it the night before.

I made two round cakes and some muffins a week ago. When the cakes were cool, I stuck them on top of each other with some butter icing and then shoved all of them in the freezer.

A few days later I pulled them out and carved the shape of the ball out of the two round cakes. I also trimmed off the muffins so they were a little more tea cup shaped.

Once I was happy with the shape, I covered the whole thing in a layer of butter icing (you could also use apricot jam). This is what keeps the crumbs from falling into everything and wrecking the design. I then put it back into the freezer until I was ready to decorate it.

Then came the fun bit. I bought readymade white icing in a little box from the supermarket. I can't remember what it's called, but it's up high and next to the marzipan icing.

If you can do playdough, this stuff is just the same! I rolled it out to cover the teapot and the teacups and added food colouring for the handles and the decorations. The spout and the teapot handle are just modelled icing, held on with toothpicks. I didn't make the icing flowers on the teapot - you can buy them in the cake section at the supermarket.

Finally, the little cups had a teaspoon of chocolate mousse added to the top to look like hot chocolate or coffee.

My daughter didn't want to cut it - she thought it was too good to eat!