Birthday Cake Retrospective

How about some evidence that I ought to take a cake decorating class?

Here are photos of Harper's birthday cakes. We cannot order professional cakes for her because I have not found a peanut safe bakery in our area. So we talk about what kind of cake she wants and I do my best.

The first year was a dog. I'm actually pretty proud of the first one, things sort of went downhill from there.


Year number two brought a fish. I was supposed to use vanilla wafers to create the scales. This didn't really work as intended and I ended up slathering a whole bunch of extra frosting to cover them. So half of that cake had about a pound of frosting on it and a suspicious layer of cookie in between the cake and frosting. Kind of gross.


Last year Harper wanted a butterfly. As usual this cake was sooooo much cuter in my imagination than it turned out. Harper liked it, but man, it really failed to live up to my vision.


This year she wanted a ladybug cake. She's been talking about her ladybug cake for MONTHS. And all week long, at every opportunity, she's been reminding me, "Mom I want a ladybug cake. But instead of red between the spots I want pink." That sentence has been uttered so many times I think I will hear it in my sleep for another couple of months. I decided to use Thin Mint cookies (the kind in our area are peanut safe) for the spots and decided that chocolate cake would be better than my usual yellow cake. I have a huge problem with crumbs when I frost, despite all the tricks I've tried, so I ended up putting two layers of frosting on the ladybug, to keep it from looking speckled. It kind of worked. We'll all be in sugar shock tomorrow afternoon though - I'll need to remember to cut little pieces!



Harper helped me bake the cake, but I only just finished the frosting so she hasn't seen that yet. I hope she'll like it. Fingers crossed!

Edited to add: We did actually remember to take Rebound to the groomer, renewed my vehicle registration, and had unbelievably good luck with the pictures. Also several family members have safely arrived in town. Yay!