"This is the cake my son asked me to bake for his birthday..."

A child’s birthday party is no longer a simple affair.

It’s a cake. THE Cake. Plus a party.

And I love it.

I asked my four-year-old son, “Darling, what sort of cake would you like this year?” and he told me …

A Digger Cake.

I dare you to Google it. Go on, I dare you.

You see, I love making cakes. I love hearing about cakes other mums are making. I love looking at marvelous, impossible to make cakes on the internet. And although I’m not particularly good at cake baking, I love the process and the trying-to-get-better bit.

So it turns out that in 2014, Digger Cakes are no longer simple two-dimensional cut-out copied from the Women’s Weekly cookbook with butter cream icing and licorice.

No, no, no. A Digger Cake created by the (apparently) average mum looks like an actual digger. Like, you know the last digger you saw on the side of a road at a CONSTRUCTION SITE. A genuine, real deal imitation of that gigantic chunk of steel and rubber.

So with my 4-year-old’s request this year? That’s what I was up against.

We’re talking marzipan, special tool things, cake boards and heaps of other secret elements that no one has told me about and don’t appear to be available at Coles.

But if you thought that was a tough enough gauntlet for me to sprint down – wait until you hear this next bit of news. News that’s going to make baking cakes (or buying cakes) for kids’ parties even more difficult than the glorious competitive professional sport it’s already become.

Today, it’s been revealed that copyrighters are messing with bakers.

Yes, copyrighters.

Copyright expert, Leanne Wiseman from Griffith University says bakers “need to be wary” when they take an image and use it to COPY for a cake without approval.

And the warning is so serious that one professional cake maker has stopped making cakes featuring Disney characters.

Stopped completely – for fear of a copyright claim that lands her smack bank in the middle of Boston Legal (or Brisbane Legal as the case may be).

According to a report for the Courier Mail,  Serene Long from Rocklea is worried that Disney will take her down because she regularly bakes cakes with little marzipan Mickey’s and Minnie’s dancing around the cake board.

So she’s stopped making those cakes completely…. Has the world gone completely bloody bonkers?

These are cakes. Eaten by children. A cake is made of flour and water. A kid’s birthday cake is eaten in about 27 minutes. It is marveled at only MOMENTARILY before it is shoved into little mouths and consumed at a pace otherwise reserved for National Geographic animal documentaries.

Cake baking is the ultimate mum sport. So let’s keep the legal craziness far far away.

As for my son’s Digger Cake, I ‘channeled’ his enthusiasm into an (easier to achieve, structurally) Soccer Field Cake. Because, “as if you wouldn’t want a totally awesome soccer cake just like this one!” Thumbs up.

I made a big rectangle chocolate cake, green butter cream and spent two hours making ‘grass’ a.k.a. dying desiccated coconut green.

And my son thought it was the best cake in the world. Priceless. And you can’t Google that.

(But not everyone lived happily ever after… I have 1kg of leftover coconut. It’s green. I welcome any suggestions about what on earth I should do with it).

Show us your best cakes friends. Send them to us on email (info@mamamia.com.au) or upload them in the comments or tag us on social media @mamamiaaus and we shall bring fame and glory to your cake making abilities.