Peyton's First Birthday

Today was Peyton's first birthday party. It was a beautiful spring day-85 degrees... As usual, there was a lot of really good food and good company...

Peyton's cake design evolved over the week as I was looking on cakecentral for ideas. I originally sent some pictures to Kyle of what I thought I was going to recreate in a frozen buttercream transfer on a single sheet cake, but then I changed my mind. I pulled together two different cakes I liked into one. It was a three tiered cake (first time I've ever done that- Used straws as support between the layers). The top tier was a "hunny" pot overfilled with honey that came off and was Peyton's cake. I liked the idea of her cake being part of the overall cake design. The bottom two layers had small FBCT's of Winnie's head as well as some free hand plain buttercream bee's, butterflies, worm etc. I filled in the spaces with grass around the edges.

While transporting the cake, I didn't secure the top tier, and it got a little smushed against the box. I tried to fix it when I got to Aunt Sandy's...

While making this cake I realized that I am probably one of the world's messiest bake makers... (as you can see from one of the shots above) I have every piece of cake decorating equipment I own out and at my disposal, even if I don't need them. I'm working on my organization...

We learned from Peyton that yellow and blue makes green! As you can tell from the picture above, she enjoyed the cake (well, mostly the icing...)

Things I would do differently next time- Split the bottom cakes and filled the layers to give it a little more icing or a filling, Secured the top tier for transport and put the whole cake on a wider base so it was easier to transport. These are just notes for next time, overall I was really happy with this cake. It was cute, just like Peyton!

Sisterly Cake Fun

Cindy and I got together with the Connelly sister for an afternoon of cake decorating. Gene joined us for lunch but not long after we started talking cake he went into his "man cove" otherwise know as the basement. We started off with WaWa hoagie- what could be better? Thanks Denise!

Denise made 4 pounds of delicious Buttercream Dream icing which managed to stretch across the many different cake's and cupcakes we designed.

Michelle challenged herself with a variety of cupcake adventurous from lady bugs to pigs! Her most favorite tip was the grass tip, she used it well as pictured above! Cindy and Denise ventured into different flowers and experimenting with coloring the icing. Cindy airbrush clouds that looked great. I brought some Royal Icing I made at home and spent the first two hours of the day coloring it and making parchment paper bags which all ripped. I believe that was the first and last time I will be using the parchment bags, but at least I tried. Royal Icing is very stiff but I do like the way the flowers turned out.

It's amazing how much "stuff" you need to make cakes but I think between all of us we had almost every product that Wilton makes to help in cake decorating. It's nice to break out those supplies and use them. Overall we had a successful day. Talked about cakes, life and many other things. I hope we can do it again soon!