Let them Eat Cake

Here's a post on the evolution of birthday cakes for our children.

A's First Birthday
Boring cupcakes. In an attempt to keep her healthy, we never really gave her sweets. Her birthday cake was one of the first sweets that she ate. Check out her reaction:

 

Don't you just want to kiss those chubby cheeks?

A's Second Birthday

Angel food cake, whipped cream icing and sprinkles. She's developed a deep and abiding love for sugar by now. All my attempts to keep the sugar at bay have been thwarted.

C's First Birthday

Almond cake with pink whipped cream frosting and sprinkles. Hmmm.... where did that original idea come from? Lucky for her, her birthday is in the summer, so she gets to have a backyard party.

She got her own cake and the other guests had something else. It was Gramma Neta's chocolate with brown sugar frosting, I believe. No picture of that one. She picked at her cake for a while and then launched it onto the grass, plate and all. I guess she was full.

A's Third Birthday

Owl Cake & cupcakes. This was about the time I discovered this great site with hundreds of cake ideas. Here's the link. I found an owl cake that I thought was incredible. The instructions were fairly strait forward, and I didn't need any special decorating tools other than a Wilton Wonder Mold pan, so I decided to try it. I rented the pan for a couple bucks from a local shop, shopped around for the eyes and beak & other elements, and got to work. I think I finished at about 1am the day of her party, but I was so happy with how it turned out.

Owl Cake & Owl Cupcakes

You can also see the little owl cupcakes I made with Oreo's, Jr. Mints and yellow rainbow chips. I'd have to say that the owl is still by far my most favorite of all my cake creations. When it was time to cut the cake, the kids all wanted a piece of it's head. The birthday girl got the left eye. I only have one blurry picture of A blowing out her candle.

I'll huff and I'll puff

C's Second Birthday

Pink Princess Castle cake. This was a fun cake to make. It isn't very professional looking, but it was still really fun. I got this idea from the same site as above and just modified it. The birthday girl loved it so much that she couldn't wait for her party to start, and she got ahold of one of the towers a few minutes before her guests arrived. Here is how she looked when she got caught. She is too cute!

Tower down!

Matt's birthday is the day after C, and he was a good sport about having a pink princess castle cake for his birthday cake. I think I'll make him his own this year.

Matt & C with tacky pink castle cake

Here's a closer view.

Pink Princess Castle Cake

What's my first thought when I look at it? Wow, that's tacky. Oh well, most 2 year old kids like tacky, right?

A's Fourth Birthday

This was the first year and last year that we had a 'friend' party and also a 'family' party. It was just too much. For the family party, A had a Black Forest cake and for the friend party she had a ballerina cake. 

Black Forest Cake

 

The Black Forest cake was really yummy. Probably one of the best cakes I've ever made, taste wise. I used 2- 9X13 pans of Gramma Neta's chocolate cake and a can of cherry pie filling between the two. The frosting was whipped cream with chocolate shavings on top. Mmmm... so good. 

The other cake was the ballerina cake. The birthday girl wanted a ballerina party, so I looked up ballerina cakes and yet again found one on the coolest cakes site. I started working on the ruffly little ballerina skirt and head 2 weeks before the party in case they turned out badly and I needed to figure out something else. I had never really used fondant before (other than my sisters birthday cake the week before) so I was still a real novice. I made my own fondant from the recipe I found here. Molding fondant was a lot like playing with stiffer Play-Doh.One day, I'll do it again.

Ballerina Cake (fondant)

I thought she was really cute. My favorite part was the shoes and the little bun in her hair. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture from the back. A's little friends came dressed in ballerina attire and danced to the nutcracker in the living room. I know this is a post about cakes, but I just had to include a picture of the adorable little ballerinas.

 

It was a really fun party.

Q's First Birthday

Number 1 shaped white cake with whipped cream frosting and sprinkles. Ummm... I honestly didn't notice the pattern for first birthday cakes until now. I didn't have any pic of the cake itself, so this is the best I can come up with.

He ate all the frosting. I do mean all of it. There was almost 500mL of whipping cream on that cake. I should have stopped him. Why didn't I? I don't know. Why did I give him such a massive cake to begin with? I don't know.

Then, he ate way too much of the cake. What an awful mom.

He projectile puked it all up on the way home. In my toque. On the back of the seat that his car seat faced. It smelled awful. In retrospect, cupcakes are a much better idea for first birthdays.

C's birthday is coming up next. I have some fun ideas...