Cake decorating - diggers!

We all have those memories of that kid whose mum always pulled out some amazing home made cake - a pirate ship, a train, a working nuclear power plant...

I'm not that mum!

However, a friend of mine gave me some brilliant advice.

"Buy a chocolate cake and stick their favourite toy on top. They will love it!"

Works for me!

As you may have guessed, Little E likes diggers. I'd collected some ideas online of digger cakes. There are some awesome ones out there, but we were returning from a family wedding and staying at my in-laws house for Little E's birthday party, so I had limited time, equipment and (frankly) energy.

I'd eaten this cake from Sainsbury's at a work leaving do. It is a huge, triple layer chocolate cake. At the time, I thought it could work well as a building site with all the chocolate "rubble".

I stood and thought a bit about my options. I wanted to decorate the number 2 on top. I had wondered about having all the diggers arranged in a big 2, but they were too big, using brownies (too big), etc. The Malteasers I had bought were much more flexible to make a number out of, so I cleared a patch...

Then add diggers!

These are from a pack by Le Toy Van. I was so pleased when I got them out of the pack. They have great movements and feel nice.

All the chocolate flakes removed from the top could then be used as rubble.

There were 3 other diggers, but they were bigger than I expected and I decided less was more. However, my cousin-in-law had found some cute builder candles for me to add.

And with the rest of their crew...

Little E clocked the diggers immediately and (after we cut the cake) played with them all afternoon. They were definitely a hit!

It was such a simple thing to do and made everyone so happy, especially the people who ate the rest of my bag of Malteasers!