The Birthday Cake . . .

For some reason I always go over the top for Bailey's birthday cake.

For her first birthday I made her a round cake with a Curious George face on the top. It looked just like George.

For the second birthday it was all about Winnie the Pooh, so I used a mold and then frosted Pooh on the top.

All these cakes were lots of work but nothing compared to this cake, her 3rd birthday cake.

This year Bailey really understood the concept of BIRTHDAY, what happens, and how much fun it is. For the last three months she has been talking about it on a weekly basis. So I started asking her what she wanted for her cake. At first her answers varied, a purple cake with fishes, a strip cake with butterflies, etc. But then she suggestions started to have a similar tone and I knew for sure that she wanted a pink cake. This last month she was dead set on wanting a pink cake. And each time I or anyone else asked she told them exactly what she wanted her cake to look like. "I want a pink cake with _________ and ________ on it." See for yourself.

Pink cake as the base, check. But what's on top, a hamburger maybe?

That red object looks familiar, I've got an idea . . .

To quote BAM, "I want a pink cake with flowers and Rocket".

Not just any Rocket, it had to be Rocket from the little einsteins cartoon on disney.

Here is a side view.

So I've known for over 6 weeks that I was going to make Bailey a pink cake with flowers and Rocket on it. But I had given very little thought as to how I was going to do this until two days before her birthday party. I didn't just want to draw Rocket on her cake like I'd drawn characters before. So I thought I'd try going three dimensional.

I knew I had my work cut out for me, but Bailey was having her sleepover weekend at Caden's house so I only had Addie to attend to, which means extra time. To save even more time I used box cake mix but I'm all about home-made frosting. To make Rocket I used two different bowls and cooked the cake in them. The shapes turned out so well I only had to do a little carving. I used frosting to hold the pieces together and wooden dowels for support. I used twinkies for Rockets boosters and graham crackers for his fins. Then after a couple of hours of frosting, I had a Rocket cake.

It was a labor of love. Bailey got to look at her cake for about 1 minute, we sang her happy birthday and then started cutting it up. In hind sight I should have displayed it as a center piece for the party and then everyone could have enjoyed my masterpiece.

Oh, and Genet got me a cake decorating book for my birthday so now I have 9 months until Addie's birthday to hone my skills.