It's Always Someone's Birthday

My daughter turned 2 this past May and since her birthday was Cinco de Mayo weekend, we threw her a Taco Twosday party. This was a really fun cake to make. I used this tutorial, and there were some really great ideas for the toppings. The cheese is made by mixing shredded coconut with orange food dye, and I found this small package of fondant that was perfect for cutting into squares for the tomatoes. “The ground beef” is a mixture of crushed Oreo cookies and buttercream frosting.

The most challenging part of this cake was smoothing out the frosting for the taco shell.

I thought this cake wouldn’t be enough for our party, but it ended up feeding a lot of people since it is so wide. For serving, I cut the cake across so each slice contained both shells and the middle.

This was definitely a fun addition to our taco party and months later, my daughter is still talking about it!

My nephew turned 2 this past February, so this post is a LONG time coming! But I’m currently on maternity leave after having baby #2, so I can finally catch up on things. Since this was only the second cake I had made in a while, buttercream waves were not only perfect for the theme, but also quite forgiving. I crushed graham crackers in the food processor to make the sand (a trick I love because it looks great and tastes awesome). The bubbles were gumballs and chocolate pearls that I swiped from a candy buffet at a party I had attended a few weeks before (very lucky timing!). My favorite are the sugar sea shells that I also used for the Moana smash cake I made a few months prior.

The trickiest part of making this cake was the Bubble Guppies characters. I decided to make them as sugar cookies. I bought these 3D printed Bubble Guppies cookie cutters and they were very nice to use. But because they were so detailed and required so many colors of royal icing, they were very time consuming. I was a bit out of practice in icing the cookies, but overall I think they resembled the characters fairly well.

I had never made a large 2-tiered cake before, but it turned out really well. I filled the cake with banana filling, but I definitely would use more filling next time. The filling tasted great, but it wasn’t all that noticeable.

Overall, I was happy with how this cake turned out. I’m looking forward to learning the theme for this year’s party so I can get started planning his cake!

Now that I’m a mom and I have friends that are also moms, I have even more reason to make cakes. So after a few years, I’ve made a comeback! Seriously, the last decorated cake I made was a Christmas cake in 2014! It’s been way too long.

So when our friends Maggie and Doug asked me to make a smash cake for their daughter Elena’s first birthday, I was so happy to dive in! They wanted a Disney’s Moana cake to go with their theme, and I had never seen the movie. But after a little Googling I had some inspiration.

With my work and travel schedule, I didn’t have time to make the trimmings for the cake, so I bought them online (thank goodness for Amazon!). The Moana figure was nicely made. I didn’t think she would stand on the cake, so I opted to put her in front. I found these amazing sugar sea shells that matched the frosting color perfectly. The sand is made of crushed graham crackers. Definitely a fun addition for kids.

The cake was made with a tried and true recipe. For the frosting, I used Wilton gel coloring in Sky Blue and divided the frosting into 3 bowls. I made each bowl progressively darker to get an ombre look. I used this tutorial for making the frosting waves. The cake was 6 inches, so I had some extra batter left over and made some matching cupcakes. Believe it or not, I actually had the tropical cupcake liners leftover from another project.

Overall, I was really happy with how the cake came out, and I think the guest of honor liked it as well!