Have your cake and read it

Here's a lovely idea. It's the Edible Book Festival 2013 over at Playing by the Book. You make something to eat inspired by a children's book - a Gruffalo Crumble, a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, a full scale replica of Hogwarts rendered in marzipan - that sort of thing. Then there are prizes.

Cakes and books, books and cakes. Quite literally made for each other. What could be better?

Unless an immense amount of time suddenly makes itself available to me, I won't be entering this year - but thought I'd get into the spirit of the thing by sharing a pic of my daughter's first birthday cake.

In the months leading up to her big day, I spent a lot of time reading Tim Hopgood's wonderful 'Wow! Said the Owl' to her at bedtime. The story goes like this: a curious owl stays awake all day, amazed at the beautiful colours that she never sees at night. Pink skies, orange flowers, red butterflies - and of course, a rainbow when the sun shines through the rain. But when the sun sets, she decides the night-time stars are most beautiful of all.

For a long time, this was my baby girl's absolute favourite book. She would point out the wide-eyed owl on each page and I would plot how I could colour icing sugar blue.

In the end, I worked out a way. I dyed caster sugar and icing sugar together in a bag, then sieved out the icing sugar with a really fine sieve. It sort of worked. It was a bit clumpy, as you can see.

So here it is then, a bit of a bodge in places, but still, the birthday cake of the book:

Good luck to everyone entering the Edible Book Festival 2013 - can't wait to see the gallery of entries. In the meantime, happy baking. And finger-licking.