My Niece turned one in April. Her name is tayden and her nickname is taydeebug. We were doing a ladybug themed birthday party for her first. My sister decided she wanted to do a combined birthday with the kids, the friends and the family.
It is tradition in our family to make a red cake for the kids first birthday party. I looked into making a red velvet cake for her, but when I saw how much food colouring in it I knew I wasn't doing that. I have an aunt and a mother who both talk about how bad red food colouring (among other things like aspetame) So I have this little voice in the back of my head telling me not to use red food colouring. At least not a lot of it. So I had to find an alternative.
Pink! It's close to red, it's colourful and there are so many fruits that I can get the colour from. I decided to make a strawberry cake for her. This time it wasn't completely from scratch. Vanilla cake mix, strawberry jello mix and a container of pureed strawberries. It was delicious and such a lovely shade of pink. I used plain vanilla icing on it.
So I made a little individual cake for the niece which I carved into a round ladybug shape. the rest of the batter was used for cupcakes for the chillens. (and by chillens I mean children)
Once I had the round mini cake shaped, I iced it in vanilla. I know I said earlier that I have a thing about dyes, but I made black fondant for the ladybug. I made the head and the striped down the middle as well as some spots. Then I took red course sugar and filled in all the space around the black. That's what you give to one year old right? Course red sugar? Hey, I'm not the one who has to stay and watch her and put her to bed. I'm just aiming to be the favorite aunt. :]
Next it was time to ice and decorate the cupcakes. I went easy with then. Covered them is white fondant, spell the childs name and bookend it with flowers. Lucky for me there were 8 kids. And her name is six lettered and two flowers, it was so perfect!
I bet you thought I was done. But like I said, It was combined, children family and friends. I needed a cake. A massive, yummy, pretty cake! I dubbed it the circus tent.
It was chocolate, of course. And more chocolate icing! Adults like chocolate, we like it a lot. I wanted bold and colourful for this cake. I covered the whole thing in white fondant and then added one inch stripes all up the side. on top I didn't want to just do normal, boring polka dots like on my last cakes. So I cut out a bunch of different colours, sizes and styles. O's as well as solid circles. Wow, creative.
I'll admit, I am terrible at Leveling a cake. So, my stripes didn't all line up nicely with the top of the cake. I was going to do a nice clean edge of piping around the top but I was working on the border, I was running out of time and I was freaking out. My husband, who was already helping me roll out balls for the border, was all like 'I do caulking for work when I do windshields, I can do the piping!' I was thinking that sounded reasonable. Until he did it, and it wasn't neat. At all. I love him to bits, but don't believe your husband when he says he can do the piping on he cake. Windshields aren't caked. they don't need to be perfectly straight and you're not working in a circle. But it was good enough.
So, one day I saw a border on a cake that was a bunch of little balls going around and up the cake instead of just a single line. So That is what I decided to do. It became my new favorite border. you'll probably see it a lot on upcoming cakes.
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