I’m not keen on doing endless novelty cakes – they’re so time-consuming and people don’t seem to want to pay for all the time it takes to make and decorate them. However, it’s my little step-grandson’s 2nd birthday and I was asked to produce an Iggle Piggle cake. My heart dropped. I didn’t even know who/what Iggle Piggle was. Some Googling later I found some photos of very good (and very poor) Iggle Piggle cakes, and other In The Night Garden characters.

I can’t claim the cake was entirely my own work. A lovely lady called Gemma at Iced Gem’s (one of my Facebook contacts) made the Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy characters! The Madeira cake (three layers) filled with raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream are all my own work, as are the green sugarpaste, grass, trees, flowers, cobbled path and lettering, in fact everything except the two characters.

On top of the green cake is a mini cake – a two layer cake, also filled with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam and covered in sugarpaste. The birthday candles are stuck in this mini cake.

Inspiration for the various elements came from a variety of images I found during my trawl of Google images, so thank you to anyone who has inadvertently helped this cake come together.