Sweet's 19th Birthday Cake inspired by Monet water lilies and Ducks

Sweet had her 19th birthday a few weeks back and I when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted she chose blueberry and lemon. So I came up with a vanilla blueberry cake with layers of homemade lemon curd covered in a vanilla Italian meringue.

To decorate, I decided to channel my love for Sweet and I came up with a mildly chaotic, colourful, beautifully whimsical cake.

Inspired by the feelings of Monet's water lilies and with cute meringue ducks swimming across the top it was a fun quirky cake.

To be honest I'm more team chocolate but the lemon curd layers are so pretty

To make the the lemon layers in the cake I used the microwave lemon curd recipe from my YouTube video CLICK HERE FOR LEMON CURD RECIPE link. 

I made 3 batches of my lemon curd and mixed in 1/2 a leaf of gelatine per batch (so 1 1/2 for all 3 batches) and set each batch into a 4" circle mould. It was a lot of lemon curd as a ratio to cake and I would probably use less if I did it again, although the layers did look super pretty. Disclaimer I am more of a chocolate fan so I do find lemon desserts a little overwhelming and I was eating it after a piece of chocolate cake.

Anyway I still had not decided how I was going to decorate the cake while I was making it. I was quite keen to use meringue ducks due to Sweet's fondness of both meringue and ducks however the cake design apart from lemon, blueberry and meringue ducks was not yet set.

The whole cake was really just background for the ducks

Whilst I was filling and stacking the cake I decided it already had a lot of sweet layers going on and thought that a semi naked cake with not a lot of frosting would be best. Which swayed my design to this muted watercolour theme.

I barely used any buttercream in the decorating layer, perhaps less that 3/4 of a cup of buttercream on the whole four layer 6" cake which is quite scant. 

To decorate I popped a few spoonfuls of my Italian Meringue Buttercream into seperate bowls and added a teensy touch of food colour and used a palate knife to pat on the coloured buttercream. Once I started I hated the colours, scrapped it off and realised it needed to be a bit more muted instead.

To achieve more muted colours, mix in a little of the other colours to 'muddy' them and take the clean edge of them. For example mix a little of the green or blue and yellow into the pink, a bit of the pink into the blue and green, and some green and pink into the yellow by just adding little touches of the already mixed buttercream into the other buttercreams (probably don't add extra drops of food colour for these small amounts of frosting it will be too much).

relaxed laid back decorating is my favourite kind

Once I was happier with the colours I resumed patting on the buttercream with the offset palate knife. By pressing down and pulling up you get the rough looking finish on the top that I have achieved. I finished with a bit of food grade edible gold leaf applied randomly for a touch of luxury.

Once the cake was ready to serve I let Sweet choose the placement of the ducks and waterlily flowers. 

We served this cake with macarons and a seperate chocolate cake which was a deep black cocoa tall layer cake. You can find the instructions and recipe for the chocolate cake by clicking here BLACK VELVET CAKE RECIPE LINK.

Black velvet chocolate cake (RECIPE HERE) and lemon layer cake 19th birthday cakes

Although the vanilla blueberry cake was yummy I'm not ready to share it yet as I felt it didn't hold up well enough as a decorated layer cake. It still has a small amount of tweaking. Or perhaps I might look at turning it into more of a snack cake as the flavour is delicious. 

stay tuned xx

Happy Baking

Linda M

💕

I hand piped these adorable little meringue ducks. The babies were the cutest thing.

Linda McCubbin is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US in 2011 (under my previous name Linda Vandermeer).

Original photos and recipe from the Bubble and Sweet blog ©Linda McCubbin 2025. I love when people share my blog ideas and give credit. Please feel free to link back to my blog for non commercial purposes or contact me. Affiliate links and adds may earn me money, however all ideas and opinions are my own.

Candylicious Macarons

I love it when I have left over macarons and get to have a play around. I had half a dozen of these pretty purple mac's sitting around plus a bit of the teal ganache and we always have sprinkles and candy sitting around so I whipped up these cute Candylicious macarons.

They might be my new favourite macaron, well to look at anyway. They look so pretty and party ready and of course they are a little bit inspired by Katherine Sabbath's beautiful cakes.

Mostly you just melt the ganache and spread it onto the top and gently push it over the edge so it dribbles down then press a few pastel pearls and sixlets onto the top. I added some mini shards of pastel chocolate as well.

You can buy your macarons or here is my recipe CLICK HERE

My macarons are coloured with Wilton Violet and the ganache is tinted using Americolor teal. The larger rounds are sixlets in shimmer white, shimmer pale pink and bright pink and I chopped some in half to give different heights. The mini pastel pearls are Queen Fine Food soft pearls in Australia you can pick them up at the supermarket. I have popped in a link to a similar US version below :)



Happy Baking

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the Children's cookbook Sweets on a Stick: More Than 150 Kid-Friendly Recipes for Cakes, Candies, Cookies, and Pies on the Go! Published in the USA in 2011 the book is still available at Amazon and many online bookstores.

Affiliate links may earn me money and contribute to supporting this blog.

Original ideas, photography and recipes Linda Vandermeer please do not reuse without permission.

A touch of Whimsy water colour cookies

Do you have a favorite cutter? One that when you pull it out you know that the cookies you make will be super adorable no matter what you do.

This Deer Aimee cutter from Cakes by Bien is one of my go to cutters it's just about as cute as you get, so when my friend asked me about it for her daughter's first birthday party I was a bit excited.

I know it's not completely normal to get excited about cookies but you know I write a blog about baking so you'll just have to humor me. Deer cookies = big excitement for me :)

Anyhoo the whimsical theme was based on the birthday girls super sweet bedroom colours so I came up with a set of cookies and macarons to tie in with it.

These 'A Touch of Whimsy' water colour cookies were some of the filler cookies. You know easy to make cookies that match in with the more complicated design but still look great. But I think you can tell from the first photo they are impressive enough to have all on their own.

And the fabulous thing about the technique in this tutorial is that you can apply it to pretty much any cookie shape with any colour theme and it will look just as pretty.

I'm hoping to pop up a video tutorial of me making these cookies on my you tube channel soon, plus I will definitely have tutorials for the other A Touch of Whimsy cookies soon.

Happy Baking

If you love these deer cookies check out my previous deer cookie posts here:
- Deer Heart Linzer Cookies
- Oh Deer! These cup edge cookies are too cute
- Sweet Deer cookies with silver leaf

A Touch of Whimsy Deer Cookies
I've added edible gold leaf to the cookies but if you don't have it just leave it off and they will still be super cute.

Deer Cookie Cutter (mine from Cakes by Bien)
Small Plastic Rolling Pin
Cornflour (cornstarch)
Ready Roll Fondant^ (around 300 grams (just under 11oz)
Roll out sugar cookie dough (recipe below)
Gel food colour (I used teal and violet)
brushes
water
1 sheet Edible Gold Leaf (I used transfer sheets)

^fondant dries out quickly, when not in use store in an airtight container or ziplock bag. To use fondant knead until pliable and smooth and roll out on a workbench dusted with cornflour (cornstarch)

Using the cookie dough recipe roll make deer shaped cookies. The dough will make around 60 small cookies. Bake as per instructions until golden.

Knead the fondant until pliable. Dust the workbench with cornflour (corn starch) and using the small rolling pin roll out the fondant until quite thin. Use the deer cutter to cut out a fondant shape.

Lightly brush the cookie with water and place the fondant onto the cookie. Gently press the fondant down onto the cookie using the rolling pin to smooth into place.

Take a small amount of teal food colour with the edge of a toothpick. Place some water into a spoon or paint palate and use a paint brush to mix with the water. The colour should be a bit washed out. Dry the brush a little on a piece of paper towel and then lightly brush the side of the paint brush along the fondant covered cookie. If the colour becomes too weak mix in a little more gel food colour.

Repeat the same with the violet. If you find the violet is too dark you may like to add a little rose or pink to the mix to brighten it a little.

Allow the food colour to dry.

Brush a little extra water onto the back of the cookie and adhere a small amount of gold leaf to the fondant covered cookie.

Allow to dry and store in airtight container for up to 5 days.



Sugar Cookie Recipe (makes 24 regular cookies or 60 small)

460 grams plain flour (16 1/4 oz all purpose flour)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
230 grams unsalted butter (8 1/8oz)room temperature
220 grams caster sugar (7 3/4 oz superfine sugar)#
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
#use regular white sugar if you do not have caster/ superfine sugar

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Reduce the speed to medium low, add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Reduce mixer speed to low and mix in the sifted flour mixture until combined. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill in fridge for 30 minutes or so.

Line a few baking trays with parchment/ baking paper.

Dust workbench with plain flour and using a large rolling pin roll out the dough until around 1/2 cm (1/4") in thickness. If the dough is to hard you may need to work/knead it a bit until you can roll it out.

Cut out cookies shapes and place the cookies on the prepared trays. (Knead and reroll dough as necessary, if it becomes to soft you can pop it back in the fridge.)

Pop the cut cookie dough trays into the fridge to chill again for around 30 minutes until firm (or in the freezer for 10 minutes).

Preheat oven to 160 C (320 F) and cook the cookies until they just start to turn golden, around 15 minutes (less or more depending on cookie size).

Cool on trays for 5 minutes and then carefully lift onto a wire rack to cool completely prior to decorating.

- Cookies can be stored in an airtight container for 1 week.

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the Children's cookbook Sweets on a Stick: More Than 150 Kid-Friendly Recipes for Cakes, Candies, Cookies, and Pies on the Go! Published in the USA in 2011 the book is still available at Amazon and many online bookstores.

Affiliate links may earn me money and contribute to supporting this blog.

Original ideas, photography and recipes Linda Vandermeer please do not reuse without permission.