Oh What Fun! Dylan is One!

 

 

Yesterday I had the pleasure of making a host of sweets for a sweet little one-year-old's very first birthday.  My friend Samantha had an all out party planned for her little girl Dylan and needed plenty of pink treats to go with.  She sent a photo of a two-tiered pink cake with ribbons and spirals galore.  The cake resembled a present adorned with ribbons and bows, and matched the theme "Oh What Fun" so well.

 

 

The bottom tier was a 9-inch vanilla cake; the top, a giant chocolate cupcake.  Instead of fondant, since this was a child's birthday and most don't like the taste, the cakes were covered in modeling chocolate.

But for sweet Dylan's party, even a fun cake like this wasn't enough... obviously, matching cut-out cookies was a must!.

Finally, a first birthday wouldn't be complete without a smash cake!  We kept it simple and just used a rose-style frosting--in bright pink of course.

 and from the photos, it looked like little Dylan enjoyed her first smash!

 

Stay Sweet!

Mason's Mustache Bash!

I was fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to make a two-tiered cake and a smash cake for a sweet little boy's first birthday party today.  The theme was "mommy's little man," complete with mustaches, bowties, and suspenders. 

Mason's mamma gave me a couple of inspiration photos, the invitation, and the colors: navy blue, lime green, and light blue.  She wanted chevron on the bowtie of the party cake and on the sides of the smash cake.

The insides of the cake matched the theme as well.  The top tier was a blue velvet and the bottom tier was a traditional "white cake"... but green!

The smash cake was a-whole-nother animal in itself.  Chevron is a notoriously difficult pattern for cakes.  It's hard to get the clean, crisp lines, and one mistake can ruin the whole thing.  Which is why it is traditionally done in fondant.  But, the whole point of a smash cake is to make a mess.  You can't make a mess with fondant!  So I spent all this time researching how to achieve a crisp chevron...with buttercream...on the sides of a round cake.  There were no answers.  And then, it just hit me... I could just use the petal method and offset the colors.  It was so beautifully simple, and the result was incredible.

 

 and of course, mommy's little man needed his own little buttercream mustache so he could really make a mess of things!

The cakes-- and the party-- were a success!