Three cakes, one birthday, baby Deedee turns One!

While I was posting about the Tinkerbell Cake I made for Miss Three's birthday I realised that I should even things up and blog about Miss One's Birthday cakes.  In true Betti style Deedee got 3 cakes, A cake smash cake, a birthday party cake, and of course the obligatory number one cake.

The Big Block Cake Shame Cake

For deedee's cake smash I made a block cake, it was simply a 1234 vanilla cake baked in a Lamington tin.  Once completely cool I cut out two squares of the same size and with the help of some delish buttercream I glued them together and then crumb coated the whole block.  After letting the crumb coat set, I completely covered the cake with more buttercream, then coloured some of the left buttercream over Red and Blue.  Using two piping bags I piped out a outline on each visible side of the block and a few H's (Deedee's birth name is Heidi) and a number 1's.  Then onto a cake stand and I let her attack the cake! Lot's of Fun!

The Party Day Cake

This here  is probably the hardest cake I have constructed! The topsy turvy cake, what a cake to take on.  I spent months and months researching how to put them together, what tins to bake the cakes in, what cakes work the best, how long do I bake the cakes for??  I also wasn't sure if i should use fondant

or butter cream to cover the cakes, and what colour? The Party was in Dec 2013 and back in October I started making the ladybugs and flower decorations, so that was about the only thing that was set in stone.  In the end I chose to use two different sized topsy turvy tins, and because of how big the bottom cake needed to be I had to give the bottom layer some more height so needed to bake another cake in a regular 10" cake tin.

So there were 3 layers of deliciousness for this cake, working for the top down, we had a dairy free coconut cake, the middle layer was a sweet white chocolate mud cake (recipes up soon), and the bottom layer was a yummy chocolate cake.

I actually cheated a little here and baked all 3 cakes over the two week prior to the party and froze them.  This saved me hours of time in the few days leading up so I could concentrate on baking other yummies instead, oh and decorating this beast.  The morning before the party I defrosted the cakes so they were ready for decorating that night. Now came the tricky part, I needed to carve out a level platform in the bottom cake for the top cake to sit on.  So basically I had to cut into the the angled cake creating a flat surface, while keeping the highest point of the angle there, it kind of ends up looking like a couch.  In order for me to work out how to do this I googled and watched many many tutorials on you-tube, so if you are going to tackle a cake like this I recommend heading to you-tube!!  Once the cutting out was done, I covered both cakes with a tasty milk chocolate ganache crumb coat, once set I then added a nice thick coat of the ganache.  After letting the ganache set for about an hour, I carefully rolled out some white fondant.  I find white fondant the scariest to work with purely because it shows up tiny mark!! Luckily not long before this party I got myself a 'Mat' which is two large fondant mats that you use to roll the fondant out in-between the two sheets.  It made life much easier as with the mat you can get the fondant thiner than you normally would and it is a great help when laying it over the cake.  To cover the cake  you take the top layer of the mat off and pick up the bottom piece with the fondant still attached without fear of it going anywhere until you start to peel it off, then you just hold it over the cake and the weight of the fondant does the rest.  And it really does work!  Now with some help of a cake board and some dowel rod placed into the bottom cake to help stabilise it didn't collapse  the cake was all tiered up! The easy part was sticking the little ladybugs and flowers over the cake, adding ribbon and some green buttercream trim, oh and of course placing Gertrude the big Ladybug on top.

The Number One Cake.

I have a little tradition that I have started, I like to make a number cake each year on the girls actual birthday. This year we spent Deedee's 1st birthday at the Zoo so I knew it her cake needed to have some kind of animal theme.  Making the Zebra really just came down the the fact I have a box of white fondant in the pantry and some pre coloured black fondant too.  

The Cake it's self was a delish chocolate cake baked into a lamington tin, I free handed the cutting out of the cake, so I could achieve the shape of the one that I liked.  I then cut the cake horizontally down the middle and sandwiched it back together with a buttercream, choc peppermint is one of my favourite flavour combos, so I used a  some yummy peppermint buttercream.  After I put a crumb coat and top coat of the peppermint buttercream all over the cake, I rolled out the white fondant using 'the mat' and cover the cake.  The fun part of this cake was rolling out the black fondant and cutting out all different squiggly lines to stick on, sticking fondant to other fondant is really easy, you just need brush a little water onto the piece you are placing down.  To finish her off, I whipped up a small batch of buttercream coloured it hot pink and piped a frilly trim about the base.  This cake was one of the easiest I have made, and I think it is one of the best looking cakes, I just adored 'Penny" the zebra, and she was pretty yummy too!