A Whale of a 1st birthday smash cake!

Someone once asked me if it’s difficult for me to let people cut up my cakes, because they are my works of art.  And I gave her a big resounding Nope!  My cakes were made to be eaten, because, in my humble opinion, they taste even better than they look.  And they look pretty, stinking good!

But to make a cake for the purpose of being SMASHED?!!  Yep, that’s right I said smashed!  Most of the time it’s not so difficult, because I usually make pretty simple cakes for my little one-year-old cake monsters.  But not this one, nope, this was one of the cutest, sweetest, ooey-est cakes I’ve ever made.  And I have to admit, it was a little hard to send this baby away knowing it was going to be clobbered by a little toddler man.

I didn’t get to meet that little guy, but he must have realized how very hard I worked on his beautiful little whale smash cake.  Because I heard through the grapevine, that he ate his cake so gingerly, that everyone at the party had a piece of whale!  😉

blue whale smash cake

1st birthday blue whale smash cake with pastel cupcakes.

blue whale smash cake aerial view

"Aerial" view of Baby Blue-ga! 😉

blue whale smash cake profile

Isn't he cute?!!!

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Flaming Phoenix Birthday Cake!

I think it’s rather apropos to feature a phoenix (the bird, not the city) cake on the weekend of the opening of the final Harry Potter movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.  You know since Dumbledore had a phoenix…..  You know…..Fawkes……  You know what…. I’m kind of a dork!  Oh well, I’m ok with that!  🙂

My dear friend Erica has a beautiful, quirky daughter named Emma.  Emma has been sketching and dreaming about her birthday cake since I made her brother a Mini Cooper cake for his 7th birthday back in January.  That’s 7 months, people!  And when you’re turning 11, that’s almost an eternity to wait for your very own custom birthday cake.

Originally, the cake was supposed to be for both Emma and her brother Avery since their birthdays are so close together.  But Emma sweet talked (or threatened, I’m not sure which) her brother into letting her have creative license with the cake.  Have I mentioned how much I love Emma?!  I’d totally steal her if her parents would let me!  So she wanted either a dragon cake or a phoenix cake.  She and her mom perused Google and found a picture of a cake that they liked, and I tweaked it to make it my own. 🙂   Not to toot my own horn, but the resulting cake came out even better than I’d envisioned it!  I love it when that happens.  😀

Emma enjoyed her brother’s triple chocolate cake so much, that she wanted that flavor, too!  So she got a triple chocolate birthday cake with vanilla buttercream and marshmallow fondant.  The phoenix is made of gumpaste and the feathers and plumage are made of fondant.

Phoenix firebird birthday cake

Phoenix birthday cake!

Back of phoenix birthday cake

Back view of the phoenix's feathers

Close up of Phoenix

Close up view of the phoenix