My Grandpa’s 80th – 2 tier ‘cooking’ themed cake

My Grandpa loves cooking. And he loves cake. And he loves purple. He is also a cake decorator himself. He made my 21st birthday cake 🙂

So when it was his 80th birthday coming up and I offered to make him a special cake, he jumped at it.

And when I was lost for ideas, this is what my Grandma suggested. Cooking. A cooking themed cake!

He loves baking and cooking and even taped all the daggy 80’s cooking shows to watch them over and over again and copy what the pros were doing. He really takes pride in his cooking. So that was my inspiration.

I was really happy with the final result.

More about the cake

Inside is 2 tiers of vanilla buttercake at his request.

I offered him a fruit cake but he laughed and said “when I spend 3 months of the year making fruit cakes for all my friends, why would I want you to make me a fruit cake!” Good point.

This was my first attempt at white choc ganache, which I did to add more flavour to the cake.

I made a miniature cooking bowl and baking tin, painted them with silver petal dust and lined the tin with some real baking paper.

The little chefs’ hat was tricky because I wanted it to be hollow and not waste too much fondant so I moulded it around my finger.

The cooking utensils were very fiddly but really fun to make and the little flour and sugar packets were shaped with my fingers.

The apron seemed like the most appropriate place to personalise the cake so I wrote ‘Happy Birthday Tom’ on it with a simple non-toxic marker before sticking the apron on.

It was a lot of fun to play with and try new shapes.

The finishing touches were the purple ribbon to seal the tiers and then a sprinkling of icing sugar all over the cake board to add to the baking theme.

This was one of my favourite cakes of all time!

Pa’s 80th Birthday cake