Wind Turbine Birthday Cake

Alex's First Wind Farm

The 25th of December, apart from being Christmas Day is also the day on which my partner, Alex, was born. As this year's birthday was a bit of a landmark (30th birthday) we decided that we would have a party to celebrate. Only problem is that it being on Christmas Day, no one is likely to come.

After long discussions we decided that it would be best to have it at the beginning of December in order to maximise the attendance! Moving the party away from Christmas meant that I could finally bake Alex a birthday cake....which meant it had to be special.

I was chatting on Facebook with one of Alex's colleagues when the birthday cake subject came up. I asked him what he thought I should do. Alex works in Wind Power and Matt thought that making a birthday cake featuring wind turbines would be a great idea.......as did I. The only problem now was I had to make it.

I thought long and hard  about how I was going to achieve this, bearing in mind I am no sugar artist.....I can't even bake an even cake! The first idea was to make the cake in the shape of a wind turbine. That would be too easy.

Then I thought about making wind turbine shaped candles.......too difficult.

Then I thought about making 30 model wind turbines out of bakeable modelling clay and making a dent in the top for the candles.......so I went to the craft shop to buy some clay.

Brushstrokes at Holme Grange Craft Village, just outside Wokingham, is a little treasure trove containing bits and pieces for all sorts of crafts. I mooched about in there for ages, primarily looking for the modelling clay but stumbling across all sorts of things before I got to them. 

I picked up some food colourings for the icing, some model boats and tractors, some edible glitter (quite where I was going to put that I have no idea, I just had to have it!) and some silver candles but I still couldn't find the clay.

I asked at the counter and the lady pointed me in the right direction which is when I found they only had 4 packets of grey modelling clay which I didn't think was enough. I started chatting with the lady, who clearly thought I was bonkers and thought I didn't have a clue what I was doing....and she was right. It was then that she had a brainwave.

Make the blades and the nacelles (the twirly bits) and make a hole in it for the candle to go through. 

This could work......I could do this!

A short while later I was back at home and making the various components I needed. It took a while because the clay is quite hard to get into a workable state. So hard, in fact that my hands were in quite a bit of pain by the end of it! 

Each nacelle I made had to be skewered with the candle to make the hole for the candle to go through. I couldn't bear to have to drill holes in them all once they had been baked so this seemed the easiest option. All I had to do then was bake them.

The 'blades' and 'nacelles' prior to baking. Note the holes for the candles.

The next task was to stick the 'blades' onto the 'nascelles'. I did this with superglue gel. Some of them stuck easier than others. Once those had dried off I put the candles through the holes.

The cakes were the next job. We were expecting 30+ people to come to the party, so there were a lot of mouths to feed. I wanted to create a landscape of both sea and land to represent the onshore and offshore aspects of the wind industry....also Alex was about to move from onshore to offshore.

I baked a very simple round vanilla sponge to make a Victoria Sandwich and a square chocolate cake that I filled with buttercream and chocolate sauce.

The square cake was then covered in a blue buttercream to make the sea. The Victoria Sandwich was cut in half and covered in green fondant icing (the ready-to-roll stuff) to make hills. The hills were placed behind the sea and to cover up the area between land and sea I crushed some ginger biscuits to make a sandy beach. Then I erected my 'wind farm'. the 30 turbines went in anywhere and everywhere although I did try to make it look orderly!

Finished Wind Farm Cake

OK, it's not the best looking cake in the world.....but it was a bit of fun and raised a laugh or two! It even tasted good!