Help me pick a birthday cake (poll)

[Flashinglight]

@Unlucky wants me to use the medium of polls to help make a decision, as is the style around here.

I have narrowed down the choice for R’s 2nd birthday cake to three designs, below, with various pros and cons to each:

Option 1: Giant Donut

+thanks to Steve Antony’s brilliant Mr Panda series of books, R really likes donuts (despite only having had a couple to eat) so the visual of this will be good - I will make it with chocolate icing and the correct colour sprinkles to make it look like the giant donut which features in I’ll Wait, Mr Panda
+pretty quick to decorate
-it will make way too much cake because I only have a large sized ring pan and will have to make two cakes for it, which means…
-it is a bit of faff having to bake two cakes
-will need to buy a few different colours to do the giant sprinkles.

Option 2: Building Site

+R is really into construction stuff at the moment (loves wearing the high vis vest and hard hat my dad got him, always picking out books with construction themes at the library)
+both the cake and decorating it will be very quick to do.
+this will be the easiest design to make look good
-I will need to find some cheap, appropriately sized vehicles and/or builders to put on it.

Option 3: Fire Engine

+another thing that R is super into right now
+produces an appropriate amount of cake
-will take quite a lot of time to decorate as the cake will need shaping, red icing will take two coats, sugarpaste will need colouring/rolling/shaping/texturing.
-definitely the largest potential to look awful if I get it wrong.
-need to get the most different things for decorating.

Which one would you choose if you were a two-year-old?

• Option 1: Giant Donut
• Option 2: Building Site
• Option 3: Fire Engine

Which one would you choose if you were the one making the cake?

• Option 1: Giant Donut
• Option 2: Building Site
• Option 3: Fire Engine

Questions and chat encouraged, including general birthday cake chat.

[Aggpass]

Not a very emotional birthday

[Aggpass]

Can’t vote in the polls but donut looks cool, fire engine will have the biggest wow factor

[laelfy]

Kids that age love diggers/tractors don’t they? No brainer.

[Unlucky]

Me and @laelfy have agreed on something

[laelfy]

I was just thinking I might revise my answer… you could build a whole set around the fire engine using the burning house etc…

[Flashinglight]

Glad I could help you find some common ground.

[Unlucky]

Maybe in the building site one they have constructed a stadium?

[rob.orch]

I voted entirely based on Jimbo’s preferences. The fire engine would come a close second. It’s dead easy to find small construction stuff - he’s got loads!

[Icarus-Smicarus]

You could stick a fire engine in the building site as if some terrible accident has happened

[Flashinglight]

some terrible accident has happened

Perhaps the accident could be that a GIANT DOUGHNUT has fallen onto the building site? Might as well get all three in there.

[Aggpass]

[Flashinglight]

Kids that age love diggers/tractors don’t they?

The building site could easily be turned into a farm if you swapped out the construction stuff for a tractor and animals and made the icing green… should not be trying to give myself more options here.

[laelfy]

I’m envisaging your entire house being covered in cakes come party day

[Flashinglight]

The birthday cake is actually going to be before the party, I can’t make him wait for cake just because it wasn’t practical to have the party until the weekend.

More cake will be made for the party, of course.

[whiterussian]

Really like the donut one, tbh.

[1101010]

I would go for the building site.

We have this book

Ranked: The 13 best cakes from the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book.

and for F’s 2nd or 3rd birthday we made the Farm cake (number 5 in that list) which was harder than it sounds because it turns out green food colouring really likes to turn cyan. Obviously we didn’t do the gate bit but my wife did buy a cheap selection of plastic farm animals from ebay and a bunch of them are still with us as bath time toys, so I guess my point is that anything you buy for the building site will be able to continue on as a toy.

You could probably check the smaller LEGO sets too. This one is retired
https://shop.lego.com/en-DE/Digger-10666
but they normally have something similar. Obviously you are still in the 'be careful of small parts time so you’d need to hold it back for a bit. I recall buying F a big box of Lego and painstakingly taking out all the bits that were below a certain size until she was older.

[1101010]

Also, my experience of that sugar paste icing stuff like in that Fire Engine is that it’s really not nice. I have a sweet tooth and it’s a struggle for me. I usually find kids at the parties leave that bit entirely, so I think it’s a bit of a waste, no matter how good it looks.

[Icarus-Smicarus]

i had a farm cake as a kid one year. my mum’s friend used to make amazing cakes when we were kids. it was a tractor plowing a field, with chocolate fingers round the outside as a fence.

i also remember a clock and mouse one based on Hickory Dickory Dock

[Icarus-Smicarus]

agree, like the icing on cheap supermarket birthday cakes. absolute shite.