REPOST – A Peacock Cake & The Gala At Yala Part 1

It was recently the fussiest eater in the world’s birthday and I made him a peacock cake!

Isn’t it adorable?  Even if I do say so myself!  And for the non-bakers out there it is all assembly, no baking involved.  I mean, you can bake a sponge if you want but, for this recipe, it is absolutely not necessary!

Yala National Park – Sri Lanka

But more about our little peacock friend later. The peacock was a special symbol for us as it reminded us of the time we spent at The Yala National Park when we were in Sri Lanka earlier this year...OMG…last year! (2021 Note – This was originally posted in January 2016)

The National Park at Yala is a huge tract of land at the Southern tip of Sri Lanka..  It is home to a myriad of wildlife.
Yala is situated in leopard country and whilst we did two Safaris hoping to see one of these magnificent creatures, we were unlucky both times….or were we?  Whilst we did not spot a leopard (pun intended) we saw so many other wild animals, living in their natural habitat that I felt utterly privileged to have been there.

Here was Mr Peacock:

There were monkeys galore:

Sloth Bears:

Some jackals playing:

A crocodile, most definitely not playing:

And a huge amount of elephants – my favourite part was when we saw two older female elephants and a cub walk down to a pond to have a bath and a drink:

Then the baby decided to have a little roll in the water:

Afterwards, they came right up to us, crossing just behind the jeep we were in.

Then there was this little one who decided to head off on his own:

The closest we got to the elusive leopard was these tracks:

On a more sombre note, there is also a monument to the people who lost their life at Yala in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

I could go on about Yala all day and have thousands more photos of all the animals and all the birds but we have a Peacock Cake to talk about!

The Peacock Cake

The recipe comes direct from the Women’s Weekly Cheat’s Cakes 2. The idea behind these books is that you can buy a cake and then just decorate it instead of having to factor in baking as well.

I made the cake for the peacock’s body because there was a random box of cake mix in my pantry. But you could totally use a bought cake.  The Women’s Weekly provides a template for the body.  I copied it onto a sheet of paper, enlarging it a bit as it was really quite small and I wanted to use up as much of my cake as possible.

One of advantage of cutting around a template is that if a bit of cake “falls” off as you are cutting around it doesn’t really matter and you can have a little taste test as you work.  You can call it being greedy if you must.  I prefer Quality Assurance.

I used the tip of an ice cream cone for my peacock’s beak.  A black jube, topped by a piece of white jelly bean topped by the end piece of a black jelly bean made his eye, with a swoop of licorice creating his cat’s eye.

And you will need something to fortify you because threading all those lollies onto the skewers takes a long time.

If making the Peacock Cake for a children’s party you can place more tail feathers in a glass by the side of the cake if you need too.  Just be sure to remove the lollies from the skewers before handing them out.

Here’s the recipe for the Peacock Cake, straight from the book.  I had to deviate from some of the sweets suggested because I could not find them – use what you have and let your creative juices flow!!!

This is so fun and colourful and would be a great party cake for a child of any age.  If you want to make it and would like a copy of the template, let me know.

Have a wonderful week.  I hope it’s full of pomp and pageantry.  For me, today is the return to work after the Christmas break which is going to be tough!  Back to the dreaded alarm and early mornings.  On the upside, tonight I am seeing one of my food heroes, Nigella Lawson, live in conversation at the Melbourne Town Hall – it should be A-MAZING!