Project Five- Make an Awesome Birthday Cake

Objectives-Make Me a Better Mom

Injuries sustained-none, but my hands were stained for a few days from the black fondant...

Difficulty level-It was very time consuming but not super difficult!

How Maya “Helped”-She didn't, she went to grandma's so I could surprise her:)

So I have always dreamed of making my kids ridiculous over-sized and beautiful birthday cakes. It is an ultimate Donna Reed type goal for me.  Last year, I bought a hello kitty cake pan and followed the instructions and made a decent cake. It was my first attempt, and it wasn't half bad. That being said, it was NOT something I was overly proud of. Being a perfectionist, I have a hard time claiming anything that doesn't look professionally done. I seem to always expect to get professional results with no training or tools. I know this is a little unrealistic, but hey that's why-most perfectionists are unhappy. As a matter of fact, I was going to include a picture of said cake, but I didn't take any because it wasn't perfect. Go figure. 

This year, thanks to Pinterest (Pinterest deserves its OWN post) I found my dream cake, well sort of. It was an owl on top of multiple tiers.It was a fondant wonderland. My one problem was I had never made or used fondant OR made a layer cake. Due to my ridiculous overconfidence and my tendency to be a dreamer, I decided it couldn't be that hard and recruited a good friend to make it with me. 

I found a blog with a good tasting fondant made out of marshmallow, a butter-cream recipe, and some great cake tutorials at Adventures in Savings and went to work. SHOCKINGLY, everything fell into place. We baked the cakes, iced them, covered them in fondant, decorated with fondant, and made a chocolate coated rice crispie treat owl for the top.

 I enjoyed this so immensely that I decided to sign up for cake decorating classes and learn to do it correctly! I looked at the finished cake and felt like the best mom in the world. It wasn't perfect, but when Maya walked in and screamed OWL CAKE!! I knew it was a success.