A couple months ago, I committed to making my friend Katie's daughter, Izzy, her first birthday and smash cake. So our July included Izzy's birthday, Jason & Jen's wedding, Brock's birthday and Kylee's graduation. As it turned out, EVERYTHING fell on July 12th. Yeah.
I'd do anything for our Izzy, so I wasn't going to back out of making her cake. After all, I made a commitment and Izzy had never had chocolate. This situation needed to be addressed ASAP.
Izzy has had a nautical style ever since she was born (Katie isn't a pink-and-frilly kind of mom), so Katie and I spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking for a nautical first birthday cake. Found it! (Look for post "Ahoi!" on 11 Oktober 2011 - cake inspiration from across the globe!) But not fondant - seriously, only my friend Jennifer likes fondant.
Fast forward to making the cake...as you know, we had a busy weekend ahead of us and I had a lot to do to get ready. All preparations were to begin on Wednesday when I would 1. Take care of the root situation on my head 2. Pick up Jason & Jen's wedding gift (that I had ordered to pick up in store 2 days before) and 3. Bake the big cake for Izzy's first birthday!
Well, the hair appointment took longer than I had anticipated. Dan had Michael and was calling on a regular basis to ask me how much longer until I came home. I sent Ellen over to the house to help him so I could run out to pick up the wedding gift (he sent Ellen home, though). One of the gifts I had ordered online went to that store, but the other went to the store across town - seriously? Fortunately, they had the second gift in stock, so we had to take the time to straighten that out. Long story short - I didn't get home until after 9:00. I decided I would wake up at 5:00 the next morning to bake Izzy's cake and decorate it Thursday night after we had a mini birthday party for Brock (since we couldn't make it to his real party).
5:00 am: I'm up. Michael's sleeping peacefully. Let's bake! Katie had given me the cake mixes, so I was good to go! Except when I pulled out my eggs and only had 2 when I needed 3. Off to Cake Central! A banana instead of an egg? I had a banana. Done.
So I reached for the oil. I didn't have vegetable oil. But I did have olive oil. It tastes a little stronger, but hey, the banana should cover that, and I added some good Mexican vanilla and a little almond extract. No problem.
After all of that, the cake turned out ok. It didn't raise as much as normal, but oh well, the crumbs tasted pretty good!
8:30 pm: We celebrated with Brock and gave him his gift (he's 4 - all he wants is the present anyway). On the docket when we got home 1. Bake the smash cake and cupcakes 2. Decorate the big cake while those are cooling and 3. Decorate the smash cake and cupcakes.
Did I reference the inspiration blog post when I decorated the big cake? Of course not. Katie had already given me the ribbon (TIP: put tape on the back of the ribbon so the grease in the icing doesn't seep through) and I knew how it was supposed to look, so I did it from memory, see:
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| Happy Birthday, Izzy! |
The smash cake you see in the picture was actually the second option. The first was really cute...until I tried to put it into the box. Oops! Both were filled with chocolate pudding (a lot of chocolate pudding since I used these pans). And this is what happened to the smash cake anyway:
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| Isn't she a sweetie? My girl likes chocolate! |
So what's next? Are we looking at another long lag between posts? Probably not. My friend Erica just had a baby, so she'll need some cupcakes to get her through those long nights. We also have a family reunion next weekend and the invitation says "bring dessert." On that note - any suggestions for Italian cupcakes? Send me pins or leave thoughts in the comments!
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