My neice is a huge fan of In the Night Garden and won't sleep without her Upsy Daisy doll. This is a cake I originally wanted to make for her first birthday, but last year children's cake decorating was so new to me that I settled for a much easier bear covered in flake chocolate.
But a year later, I revisited the idea and decided it wasn't really that hard - it was just the hair I was stuck on. Cutting 7-10 banana shapes out of cake and icing them seemed to be asking for things to go wrong.
The cake itself is no star recipe. I used Nigella Lawson's Buttermilk Birthday cake - the same recipe I used last year. You could easily substitute packet cake mix. The icing is chocolate buttercream for the face (with some red and yellow food colouring added to warm up Upsy's complexion), and vanilla buttercream tinted pink (both Magnolia recipes).
What was different this year, was that I found these:
With a little microwave magic, three of these sticks form one strand of Upsy's hair. When warm, you can shape and bend them (when cold, they snap and break). I used the yellow, orange and pink for the equivalent on Upsy and red licorice for the red strands.
The eyes are white chocolate and dark chocolate melts, and the nose is a Smartie. Eyebrows are done with ready made pink writing icing from the Supermarket.
Of course, what didn't occur to me until the cake was made was that a little girl probably would not enjoy seeing her favourite character sliced and eaten. Good thing for us she was so tired, she had a nap after blowing out the candles.
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