Belle and Boo Ballet Birthday Cake

As mentioned previously on my blog, we are huge fans of Belle and Boo and Mandy Sutcliffe’s stunning illustrations. Last year, I made a Belle and Boo themed birthday cake, this year, my little girl asked for the same.

Enjoying ballet classes, I decided that I would take a look at the ballet illustrations Mandy Sutcliffe had drawn of Belle and Boo and having used the Belle and Boo Ballet Cotton Poplin to make my daughter’s Belle and Boo inspired ballet bag, I knew that I could take inspiration for the cake from there.

I isolated, a seated girl figure and ‘Boo’ attempting a headstand and set about crafting them out of Renshaw sugar paste. The girl I picked, wasn’t ‘Belle’, she was blonde, I did think about keeping her blonde, however, both my husband and I decided to keep it as ‘Belle’ as she loves the main characters, so I changed the hair and added ‘Belle’s’ iconic fringe.

The cake itself was two tiers, as per previous years, due to my daughter’s dairy free and gluten free diet. The top tier was a free from cake, with Renshaw Baby Pink ready to roll fondant icing and the bottom, was a standard sponge cake with white ready to roll fondant icing for her birthday guests to enjoy, both had dairy free buttercream icing.

Unfortunately, cake crafting with limited time meant I could only make the cake and the models while my daughter was at preschool or asleep, so I ran out of time to decorate the lower tier. I decided, rather than leaving it completely plain, I would add some simple tulle pompoms between each cake, just to add something to it and tie both cakes together.

The Meri Meri candles were just perfect; a beautiful range of a coloured candles ranging from white, through to light pink and magenta, each candle has a scattering of gold glitter and they were the perfect addition for the cake.

My daughter’s birthday party was lovely, I woke up early to finish food preparation, cake decorating and I also set about decorating our welsh dresser using lots of decorations from one of my favourite shops, Little Maldod.

I made a ‘Happy Birthday’ banner using DIY Pastel Letter Banner by a Little Lovely Company. It added some colour to the dresser and I know we will reuse it again as the set contains 138 letters and symbols giving endless options for banners to hang around our home. I also added more colour and fun, with the Meri Meri Pinwheel Set, these were suspended from the dresser with metallic thread and embellished with shiny gold foil.

I also, hung confetti balloons around our house and garden. These beautiful balloons are filled with confetti and were the perfect decoration for the party; once made static, the confetti stuck to the sides of the balloon and looked really sweet; not to mention they were lovely balloons to give away at the end of the party.

Inspiration for the birthday cake was this pattern by talented textile designer Rhiannon Southwell using Mandy Sutcliffe’s Belle and Boo ballet illustrations.

The Woodland Wife - Belle and Boo Ballet Birthday Cake