Nix9to5

Birthday Cake Fun — With Pictures!!

// October 12th, 2010 // Children and Babies, Cooking

In just three short weeks, the Bear will celebrate his second birthday.  It is completely unbelievable to me.  When we brought him home from the hospital, everyone told us how quickly time would fly, but you can’t really understand until you’ve been there.  I mean, this tiny baby I brought home, like, yesterday speaks in almost-complete sentences and when you ask him what he wants for breakfast, he says something to blow your mind, like, “Ummm . . . couple eggs.”

But I digress.

Right now (yes, at nearly 10:00 at night, two and a half weeks before the party), I’m baking “practice cakes.”  I am well aware that they actually make cakes you can buy at the store, and that you don’t have to bake cakes yourself . . . much less decorate them . . . much less practice-decorate them.  However, I can’t seem to give in after only one birthday.  And as for the practice decorating?  Well, until last year, I had never decorated a cake before.  Since I had to practice that one, and it turned out pretty well, I figured I’d better practice this one, too.

The Bear’s birthday is shortly after Halloween, so last year we celebrated with a Halloween party at the Orr Family Farm.  I highly recommend the Orr Farm for birthday parties, and I’m sure we’ll have another one there when Bear is old enough to actually remember it.

We used the theme “Pandas and Pumpkins” since Bear was a panda for Halloween (duh–he’s a Bear). Using a Wilton cake pan, I made him a small panda birthday cake, and I made panda cupcakes and pumpkin cupcakes for his guests.  Here are some pics of my first attempt at cake and cupcake decorating:

To easily frost the cupcakes, melt the icing in the microwave for a few seconds, and dip the cupcakes in the frosting.  This gives a nice, smooth surface and is much faster than actually spreading frosting.  For the pandas, I used chocolate candy melts for the ears and black eyes.  A dot of white frosting and a chocolate chip finished each eye.  Add a chocolate chip nose and pipe on a mouth, and voila–pandas.  For the jack-o-lanterns, I just piped on faces with black frosting and added a green licorice twist stem (these are green apple flavor, and I didn’t know they existed.  Mine were Archer Farms brand from Target.)

The panda was made from a mini stand-up bear cake pan from Wilton.  It was a royal pain in the neck to pipe all those little stars on the panda.  Literally.  My neck and back hurt for days.  Probably because I didn’t know what I was doing.  I added the “birthday” cupcake because I had no idea where to stick the candle.  It seemed kind of macabre to jam it in the panda’s head.  Oh–and the grass the panda is sitting in?  Totally there to camouflage a mistake.  I didn’t trim the bottom of the cake, and when I finished the panda frosting, there was all this bare cake under his bottom.  I tinted some frosting green, piped it on, and there you have it.

Oh, I love looking at these pictures.  They make my heart feel so big.

There’s more birthday cake fun ahead.  My sister, who is practically a genius, has two little boys, one of whom is only two weeks older than my Bear.  She is, apparently, a cake decorating wizard, so I’ll be sharing some of her birthday cake pictures with you as well.

As for the practice cakes cooling in my kitchen?  Well, they are a surprise.  You can see pics after the party.