Birthday Cake

I keep forgetting that my pictures post in reverse. Oh well, so here's the finished project. Scarlet's 2nd birthday party had a Zoo theme. I got hats and different Zoo themed giveaways from Oriental Trading co. online and found some Little people animals for the Zoo cake.

I had been thinking about her cake for a week or so before I made it and couldn't decide how I wanted to do it. I looked around online for some ideas and like the waterfall idea and decided to make a square and a round cake on top. The top cake weighed 5 lbs and so I got some wooden dowels, cleaned and cut them up (Charlie did that for me) and poked them into the bottom cake for support. I don't know a whole lot about cake making, but you can figure that such a heavy top cake would crush the bottom cake for sure.

I used marshmallow fondant, which is super easy to make, but takes a lot of kneading and arm work, especially when mixing in colors. It also tastes pretty good, unlike regular fondant. There is raspberry cream frosting under the fondant also (it's also really easy to make) and layers of chocolate and silver cake (Betty Crocker recipe, it isn't really silver).

I wasn't sure how long everything would take to make, so I prepared the cakes a couple days before the party, crumb coated them and stuck them into the fridge. Not sure if I would do that again. It would be better to call a couple of late nights because the cake was a little dry. Also, I put a raspberry jam as a layer and even though the cake had a crumb coating, it still soaked through; definitely wouldn't do that again, especially since the cake was so heavy. Don;t get me wrong it still tasted good, but for all that work I honestly was expecting it to taste amazing. :)

I had an awesome time creating the cake. Thanks to my helpers: Athena and Debbie! You were great!