0 First Birthday Fun

My little girl just turned one, so being that I love to do cakes, I was so excited to do a cake for her birthday. I had seen a giraffe birthday cake in a Wilton Yearbook, and since she loves giraffes (...okay, maybe it's me that loves giraffes, but I'm slowly brainwashing her to have giraffes be her favorite animal :)

My husband gave me one rule when it came to her birthday cake--no fondant. He wanted it to taste good for her when she dug into it and took that famous first bite that parents so look forward to, with camera in hand.



The giraffe's body was made from a football pan, the head from half of a sports ball pan, the muzzle from a mini ball pan, and the neck, ears, and legs from sugar cookies. It took a lot of time, and a lot of stars, but I finally got the cake covered.


I think that he turned out pretty cute. And I only used fondant on the hat and sign! That's pretty good considering that I love working in fondant.


The next decision to be made was what to feed our party guests. I found this idea at bakerella.com, and when my husband saw it, he thought it was the coolest idea, so that is how we ended up with these cute little "hamburgers" made from cupcakes (buns), brownies (meat), frosting (mustard, ketchup, lettuce), and sugar cookies (fries). That's my kind of hamburger!


I had a dilemma, though. I needed some way to tie the giraffe/animal theme in with the hamburgers and fries. That's where these little boxes came into play that I found at orientaltradingcompany.com. Too cute and too perfect to make little happy meals with the hamburgers and fries for all of the kids.

And as everybody knows, a happy meal must come with a toy or prize. Aren't these little bubbles adorable and totally perfect to help tie everything together?!

Everything turned out perfect for her party. The weather was great and the company was even better.

And here is our little angel, enjoying a bite of the giraffe's ear. I guess that she's more of a cookie girl than a cake girl. We'll see if we can change that :)

0 Baby Gracie's Cake

We had a baby shower for my friend Jamie who is due in December with a little girl (Grace). My friend Tosha and I worked on this cake together. We stuck to using pink, green, and brown to coordinate with the colors Jamie is doing for her nursery. We had a fun afternoon working on it together and were pleased with how it turned out.

The bottom is an 8 inch triple chocolate cake with vanilla icing as filling, covered in fondant. Tosha had a cute mini-bear pan that she used to bake up the bear. We covered him in tip 18 stars, and used fondant to decorate the rest of the cake with a bow and flowers.

0 Eagle Scout Cake

I just finished a cake for an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for my friend Lisa's son. I molded the medal out of fondant with the lettering on it in royal icing, and painted the "metal" parts with silver dusting powder mixed with clear vanilla to get it to resemble real metal.

The cake itself was a 12x12 butter cake filled with a strawberry cream and iced in lemon buttercream.