GASP! What happened to May?!

Just noticed that I completely MISSED posting the photos of the biggest one's birthday cake!!  This year's theme was FROZEN, of course, which was FUN to do and fun to make!  We started out her 5th birthday celebration this year with a friend party at a gymnastic place, with cupcakes:

These guys were fun and easy to make!  I found the eyeball candies in the cake section at Safeway, mixed up some black frosting and went to town.  The blue around their bodies are supposed to be reminiscent of the little blue pants that they wear.

For her actual birthday, she let me do a "Frozen" cake, which took some convincing, because not a week before that she wanted me to make her a Hercules cake! After searching high and low for some sort of Elsa cake topper/toy, and having no luck, I tried my hand at sculpting, with also no luck.  Last ditch effort, was to find a graphic online, print it out, stick it to a stick.  Miss 5 year old was thrilled.

I was also pretty happy with the looks of this cake - I'm still working on find the perfect recipe for the INSIDE of the cake, along with a yummy delicious filling.  The snowflake cutters were the funnest in this cake - they were so cute, and fun to stamp out little fondant snowflakes.  The "ice" was a little tricky, as it was a hair humid at my house that week, so when I made the glass a couple of nights before, some pieces were crystallizing by her birthday.  None the less, it was a fun cake to make. 

Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse is a favorite of my baby girl.  Every day she asks to watch "Mouse" on TV, carries around a Minnie Mouse stuffy, and often comes and shows it to us.  She even has a little Minnie Mouse dress up doll thing that she loves.  So, for her birthday this year we decided it was appropriate that she have a Minnie Mouse theme!  We didn't go crazy this year, but did manage to get my folks to come to her birthday party!  I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake as well, although was intimidated by lots of the cakes that I was seeing online.  I ended up finding one that I thought I could pull off. 

For the cake, I decided to do a bottom up cake using this recipe, which I ended up tripling to get enough for two 8" square pans and a small 1/2 circle cake.  I also used Sweetapolita's whipped vanilla buttercream frosting recipe.  It is delicious!  The end result - (I had baby girl's name on it, but blurred it out):

 

I have to admit, I wasn't that excited about the buttercream bottom when I was trying to get it smooth, but once I started putting stuff on it, I started to mind less.  I was reminded why I am drawn to fondant, it's ultra smooth texture is so nice and clean.  I've struggled in the past covering cakes with just fondant, and didn't want to go that route again, so opted for the buttercream and struggled there too!  In the end, i thought the face ended up adorable, and I love the polka dots and decorations on the side of the cake.  

Another issue I ran into.  Beings that I work at my job during the day, I was working on this cake in stages.  I baked it Monday, and decided to save myself some time Tuesday night and buttercream it - which in total with baking probably took me 3-4 hours.  On Tuesday, I did all the decorating with the fondant, which ended up taking me another 2-3 hours.  But then it sat another day until we had the party Wednesday night.  I wasn't sure what to do - I didn't really want to put it in the fridge in fear that the fridge would completely dry it out, but it ended up being a little dry from sitting on the counter for 2.5 days.  Ideally, I suppose, "real" bakeries bake one day and decorate the next?  I'm curious what everyone else does!