After making Ruthie's birthday cake, I got to reminiscing about cakes that I have done for my own kids the last few years. I've had so much fun coming up with ideas and making them come to life! (This is a super long post, covering the last 4 years of birthday cakes, so hoooold on......here we go!)
So....I love Curious George. Therefore, my son does too :). So we decided on good ole Georgie for Drake's first birthday theme.
I have a huge family. My mom is the oldest of 11 children, and we have 20+ family members here in town. So I generally have done a kids/friends party in the morning, and a family party for the evening. I've tried to work my cakes so that I can just make one big cake, and keep most of the design intact for the evening party. I made a big rectangle cake with a circle on top, serving the rectangle for the kid party, saving the George part for the evening party.
I always frost my cakes with buttercream, and for the details, I made my own fondant with marshmallows! I don't remember the exact recipe, but there's several online. I used it for George's face, head, ears and eyes, and then piped the black details (so hard to color icing black!)
Here's my little man, so cute! Looks just like Violet!
Fast forward a year! Look at this little boy! Not much baby left in this 2 year old! Drake's godfather made him this special birthday plate, so we try and use it as much as we can on birthday week! These are the cupcakes he took to school. Pretty simple!
By the time Drake was two, he was full on obsessed with cars. Especially Daddy's Yellow Car (a yellow VW bug). So we decided to go with a car theme, and a D.Y.C. cake. For this cake, I did three tiers of cake, with a cake car on top. I made fondant again, in gray to wrap around each layer like roads, and in black for the hubcaps. Maybe I should have done black tires with gray hubcaps, oh well.
I wish I had a video, but I successfully used two large spatulas under the D-R-A-K-E layer, and transferred the top two tiers (and car) to another tray, and served the cake from the bottom layer to the morning guests. So it was a complete cake for the evening!
Cars are still an obsession to this date, but when we got close to his 3rd birthday, all he could talk about was Mickey Mouse. There was no question as to the theme of this birthday! I did the three layer cake again. The Mickey hat is cake with fondant on top (this time I bought a small bucket of fondant, it's so hard to color stuff black like I said before!). I cheated a bit with the ears....they are cardboard covered in fondant.
The candle holders were a gift from my aunt when Drake was a baby. There are 5 silver circus animals. They are soooo cute! I love to pull them out at birthday time!
Mikey and Minnie!! I made Drake black corduroy longalls with a Mickey applique on it. Stay tuned for a birthday outfits post! (I was about 7 months pregnant with Violet here!)
On....to....ROBOTS! This was a really fun one to do. This little guy looks like he's going to Eeep Beep Boop, stand up and walk off the cake plate! The body and head are made of 3 layers of cake (8" and 6" squares), and the legs are one 6" square cut in half. All of the nuts, bolts, wrenches, etc are chocolate. I used this mold for the wrenches (arms and ears), and this mold for the nuts and bolts. I stood up lollipop sticks in the chocolate molds, so that I could push the nuts into the cake and they would not fall off. There are mini chocolate robots on the cake board as well, which I used for cupcake toppers for school. So cute!!!
I discovered a new product that I used for the face and name plate...Wilton's Sugar Sheets. You can get them at Michael's in many colors and patterns, and it cuts with scissors or a craft knife. I printed out the letters on computer paper, cut them out, and used them as a template for the Sugar Sheet letters. You just adhere them with water, and they are eatable. (though I wouldn't cover an entire cake in it, it's not thaaaat good to eat. But a good layer of buttercream underneath, and you can just peel it off if you don't like it)
Oh the elation on his face!!!
Not cake related, but these were the goodie bags and Nuts and Bolts snacks (pretzels, cheerios and M&Ms)
And now on to my precious little lady, Violet! Or, as Drake calls her "Our Little Sweet Potato", lol.
At one, they don't really have things they are super into yet. For Drake, I just chose George, so for Violet, I decided to give her a Violet Cake. I got a silicone flower mold, and some violet gumpaste. This is the mold:
Here are a bunch of finished violets, with a dot of yellow buttercream in the middle. This heart cake pan was the one my mom used on my first birthday cake! I ended up serving appetizers in them :)
I did three cake layers, and pressed the violets along the edges. I used Sugar Sheets again for the lettering and the 1. I brushed on some luster dust on the 1 to make it a bit glittery.
Surprise! Ombré cake! I separated the cake batter and colored each layer a bit more purple.
So pretty on a plate!
And here she is, my precious little doll. I made her dress, of course ;)
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