Recently, a friend of mine asked me to make a cake for her Niece. In the Night Garden is her favourite, and so she wanted that as a theme….

Cue panic.

I can’t make figures.

Thankfully, a brief search showed me that we could purchase some little plastic figures. Panic over.

Then she also wanted some cupcakes to go with the main cake…. (see this post for the making of the main cake) So I decided to take some other, less complex, characters (that were not included in the set) and make some to decorate the tops, along with daisies and balls, in keeping with the ITNG theme….

The Haahoos!

Five puffy, pillowy characters that wander around the garden. Colourful. Reasonably simple. Both things I look for in things to make.

First off I tackled the little blue dude, coloured some icing blue, then took a small piece of that to make a lighter shade for the spots. First, the general shape..

…next, I made some marks approximately where the spots would go…

..then taking some of the lighter shade, put some small balls on to the figure…

..then I flattened them slightly into the surface…

…next, I drew around them with a black food pen…

Next step, some white ovals for eyes, which I then again drew around with the food pen, with a spot in the centre for a pupil, and a little smile…

Blue dude done! I think he looks quite happy, slightly wonky about the eye perhaps… but happy!

The yellow one was done in a similar way, the basic shape made, eyes attached and traced, but then the blue, orangey, and red spots dotted on with a paintbrush:

The flowery one involved a central orange circle, surrounded by balls of different colours, then again eyes and smile:

The purple Haahoo is composed of a purple base shape, sortof like a Russian doll, then similar to the blue one, yellow blossoms were made (thankfully I have a PME plunger cutter for that), a orange centre added, then they were imprinted into the surface, eyes and smile added…:

Finally, the other Haahoo is made up of a blue and red checkerboard. I coloured the icing, then rolling them both out to the same thickness, I cut strips, and then squares of each:

Assembled into a checkerboard:

Then a circle cut out using my smallest pastry cutter:

Then eyes and smile….

Done! (I only made one of these as they were much more irritating!)

All in all, I’m quite pleased with them, I think they look enough like them to work well.

Haahoooooo!