Birthday cake anyone....

Even though Wilton graduation was a thing of the past, I decided I had one more task to achieve before I could even begin to think of making cakes for anyone outside of the immediate family (you know the people who have to lie to you).  It was to tackle the unthinkable....the gosh for saken large cupcake pan again!  This time the victim was my 9 year old cousin.  She desperately wanted a horse cake; but, let's face it, that WAS NOT going to happen.  So after a little manipulation of the two pieces (of the cupcake that is) and about 3 hours of piping, we had A BIG RED BARN.  I was ecstatic!

Okay, okay I know it looks like it is on fire but use your imagination.  That is hay.  Now with this stupid cupcake pan mastered, I could move on to bigger and better things. 

As for the next cake, well let's just say I went way over my head.  It was a total nightmare.  My first mistake, thinking I needed to make marshmallow fondant instead of using store-bought.  WON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN.  It definitely tasted better; but, totally not worth all the trouble.  And the mess was ridiculous.  Powdered sugar covered my kitchen counters, my floors, me and my weenie dog.  Poor little guy came to investigate all the noise and got covered as it flew off the counter.  Once I got a handle on the fondant situation, the cake finally came together.  And despite all the trials and tribulations it turned out pretty decent.  It definitely was a good learning experience.



After not sleeping for 48 hours, I realized I was way too ambitious.  So for the next cake (another birthday cake) I kept my design much more reasonable.  First off, I got rid of all the fondant except for decorations.  Buttercream would just have to do.  This cake would have been a breeze, had I figured out how to manage my time better.  By this point I was definitely learning that anything you could do in advance, was better off done in advance.   The fewer amount of items I left for myself to do the day of, meant the more sleep I got.  For example, coloring the fondant.  Even though I was coloring small amounts, it was extremely time consuming.    Anyways, back to the cake, dinosaurs were the star of the show.  ROOOAAAAARRRR!!

I absolutely loved this cake; but, that was probably due to the fact that this was my best work so far.  This was actually my first attempt at a 2-tiered (stacked) cake.  And it worked!!!  My structural engineering degree deserves all the credit. 

As if the gigantic cake wasn't enough I decided the birthday boy needed his own personal volcano.   

I quckly learned birthday cakes were my speciality (I definitely wasn't good enough to attempt a wedding cake).    And it seemed I was doing quite a few of them.  So instead of boring you with all the details (because I'm sure you have figured out by now they each had their own set of problems), I've decided to just include pictures.