Cakes

A Cake For My Birthday Girl

I’m so excited to finally share the making of my daughter’s 8th birthday cake. What a blast I had making this! I felt all of my creative juices flowing with every step of this challenge. I should mention that this endeavor was made a success due in large part to my sweet twitter friend @ednascafe. She volunteered to be my cake coach and held my hand via twitter the whole way through ;-). Thank you so much Janet!

Ok, so my goal was to create a 2 layer cake at my daughter’s request and to make it as sweet as could be just like her. I really wanted to make this cake special. I decided to cover the cake with marshmallow fondant, also known as MMF. I read so many reviews about it tasting better than the store bought version. Janet suggested I use Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake and it turned out super moist and seriously was the best tasting white cake I’ve ever made.

What really helped this process along was making the MMF and cakes ahead of time so that I could really focus on assembly during the day before my daughter’s 8th birthday party. I really believe that you need to break up a cake project like this especially if it’s your first attempt. With each critical step behind me I felt more and more confident that the cake would be a success.

My real relief came after I rolled and then applied the MMF on to each cake tower. I was so glad that my mom bought me a fondant smoothing tool because it really came in handy for this step. After they were both covered it was time for the fun part of cutting out the decorations. I had my daughter help with this part and she really enjoyed watching the cake come together.

I wish I could’ve hidden the cake to surprise my daughter but with 3 kids in the house and having the cake take hours to create there was just no way to hide it. In the end the cake turned out beautiful! My daughter loved it and that is what mattered most.

Crumb coated cakes. I was feeling good at this point ;-). Dowels had been cut and inserted as well.

Both cakes covered in MMF and looking good.

This bow turned out pretty cool. I added some gum paste to a small portion of the purple so that the bow would hold its shape. You can see step by step instructions here.

 

My daughter helped me with all the little balls ;-).

Cake is done and daughter loves it! I covered with a large plastic bin overnight so it would be safe.

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