The first important event of 2012 in our household has occurred!  My son is now three years old.

We celebrated his birthday quietly as we had a big party booked at Rimando’s Soft Play and Coffee Lounge a couple weeks later.  My husband and I bought him some knights that he had chosen from Totally Toys on Gloucester Road.  He calls these his ‘fights’ and takes them everywhere:-)

My parents came round in the afternoon and my sister came round later that day for a birthday tea.  He had some lovely presents.

One of these I thought was a clever idea.  This was a Melissa and Doug ‘Latch Board’.  It is simply a board with six different types of latch on it.  When you open each latch, it reveals a different picture and number.  It is great for developing fine motor skills.  My son enjoys doing it and his little sister is also fascinated (much to his dislike!).

Some weeks ago, I asked my son what type of birthday cake he wanted.  He told me he wanted a ‘robot cake’.  However, he also specified that he wanted a robot cake ‘with actions’. 

By actions, he meant fire and laser type things coming from the robot.  It was decided that he would  have this ‘Robot with Actions’ cake at his birthday party at Rimando’s.

It has become quite a tradition now that the day before his birthday party, I go to my mum’s and we do the cake together.  We made the robot shape by cutting the sponge into five rectangles for the body and limbs and a square for the head.

I decided to make the robot red and yellow, rather than standard robot grey.  Well, I thought that icing a robot cake would be relatively easy!

However, I was mistaken.  It was incredibly fiddly icing not just the top of the robot but the sides of the legs and arms as well.  I became slightly worried halfway through icing the cake that it was resembling Pudsey Bear more than a robot!

When the cake was iced, I used silver balls, chocolate sprinkles and hundreds and thousands to decorate it.  Lastly, I used letter icing to make the promised ‘actions’!

Despite concerns that the robot slightly resembled a teddy bear, I reasoned to myself that as long as my son recognised the cake as a ‘robot’, then I would consider the cake a success.

I will write about whether this was the case and also about his Rimando’s birthday party in my next post!