I love making birthday cakes! Correction- I love decorating birthday cakes. Baking is not so much fun, but decorating makes my blood come alive. This cake took me about four hours to decorate, mind you I do take my time! It's great to have a plan for each layer but do just go with the flow because it never will end up how you planned it.
For instance, I did not plan on making pink rosettes to frame the bottom of the cake, I did this to hide the big gap between the green icing and the cake from the plastic wrap that I had placed on the cake stand to protect it from getting too messy. You have to improvise when you're an amature.
Here are the steps to making a three layered birthday cake:
Bake all four layers of cake the day before the party.
Start in the morning! I baked two 9 inch round cakes for the first layer with my Lucky Vanilla Cake Recipe. DO NOT DOUBLE THE RECIPE! Bake cakes individually and separately. Always do this when baking from scratch. The cake chemistry changes when you double, in other words, it ruins them. I still had to serve it to my friends unfortunately, but hey, I'm learning more and more every time!
I baked one recipe of my Lucky Vanilla Cake for a deep 6 inch round cake pan (I used a cheesecake pan) for the second layer.
I used the remaining batter from the second 6 inch layer cake to make the ladybug cake. I formed a slightly smaller circle shape with aluminum foil inside of my 6 inch cheesecake pan.
Make all icing the night before the party! And color all of your icing. Measure at least 3 cups of icing/buttercream for green, 2-3 cups for pink, 1 for red. A tiny bit for white and I bought a disgusting pre-made tube of black icing for the ladybug details.
I layered the cakes with fresh strawberries and jam the night before and wrapped my cakes thoroughly with plastic wrap and left them on the counter overnight. Do NOT refrigerate~ at least that's my opinion anyway. It makes the cakes denser, I like it fluffy.
Measure your dowels the night before to be ready to assemble your cake first thing in the morning. Plan for four hours before the party to focus on the cake, otherwise, do it the night before.
I made a sugar free icing for the cake that I'm pretty proud of, but it's not quite ready to go public yet..it will come soon!
It was such a fun party and I loved organizing it!
Here are a few other things I did for the party:
Cake Pops!!! Is it a toddler party without cake pops? Honestly, I hate them, I hate making a million of them, but they're cute after all.
And Ladybug pins- These were really cute and it was fun to make with my mom and friend. I don't think I would have made them without their entertainment and help. I also made some ribbons that my daughter really liked.
And of course, it's not quite a party without a few decorations. I made these while watching a movie, so it didn't seem to take much of my time. Gluing the letters on ribbon with hot glue was really fast and easy. I will probably do this again.
Well, I'm glad to be back after such a long absence. I'm looking forward to all of the wonders that 2013 has to offer~ Happy New Year!!
