Dragonfly Bento Box: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Birthday Cake

This year I made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (TMNT) cake for my son's 6th birthday. I tried the frozen buttercream transfer according to Wilton's video here (I reduced the amount icing sugar used). His favourite was 'Raphael' - the one with red eye wrap. I drew a cranky and grumpy Raphael which finally approved by little boss (my son) only after the second version. We were really excited about it. My boy did the mixing and selecting the colours and I piped the buttercream on a piece of wax paper. He was having loads of fun. In the progress, I also popped the question of what makes green colour and started to discuss about primary colours as home learning. Unfortunately, we did not manage to get the red colour we wanted. In the end we decided to abandon and go for blue instead. So 'Raphael' become Leonardo' instead :P It was my first try on frozen buttercream transfer. And because I did not have a steady hand, the outlining was not as smooth as expected. This was done one week ago and I kept it in the freezer before the big day.

A day before the actual birthday, I baked chocolate cake. Yes, it was chocolate cake again! The adventurous me tweaked the receipe by experimenting with top flour, extra dark cocoa powder and chocolate couverture I bought from Phoon Huat Baking Supplies store. The effect :-

My cake shrank a little (which I did not know why) but did not collapse (Phew)
It gave a really charcoal black colour just like the oreo biscuit
No chocolate taste in the extra dark cocoa batter (I thought was a little weird when I tried a spoonful)
It was not awfully sweet overall with a slight bitterness.
The sweetness of swiss meringue buttercream I did later actually complement it
Texture was moist - happy!

Last part was to frost the whole cake with swiss meringue buttercream and placed the frozen buttercream transfer on the cake. Prior to that, I have watched many videos frosting a whole cake. Yet, I still got crumbs visible on my cake. And the more I wish for perfection, the cake crumbs appeared even more. With exhaustion creeping in and it was past mid-night, I decided to let it be despite the imperfection.

Ninja Turtle Birthday cake

Frozen buttercream transfer

Since it was the last year with his kindergarten, I bought 17 Aseop fables storybooks during a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for his class (including my son) instead of goodie bag as remembrance. It was a steal because it cost only $4.90 per book after the exchange rate conversion and Border's member discount.

Left - Aseops fables
Right - my hubby's book

Originally, I planned to celebrate his 6th birthday at the LEGOLAND Hotel and even invited his two Jie Jie(s) for the stay. However, the trip was cancelled because Nitro, our pet dog suddenly lost his eyesight and was diagnosed with high blood pressure. We need to follow up with the vet for further check up and also, could not bear to leave Nitro at the boarding house. Hence, we gave my son an early birthday treat to Singapore Night Safari instead. Back at home, I prepared the birthday banners and my son cleverly and creatively hung it on the chairs and we did the usual stuff; photo shoot, sang birthday songs (in 3 languages) and of course, cut and ate the cake.