Minion Lucas turns 1!

First birthday cakes are the best! It's usually about the parents choices, but the babies are so lit up when they have their first party! 

This is my second minion cake. I have made a made a full size minion only cake a couple of years ago so I was pretty confidant to make a smaller version. The Minion on top is 3 layers of 4"chocolate cake with a 1/2 dome cake for the top.  He is covered in fondant and all the decorations are edible the hair, number 1 and even the goggle. 

Gramma Janine made the Minion mini cakes it is such a cute display. The base cake is a 9" cake with buttercream frosting the polka dots & letters are simply fondant shapes I cut out. 

Emma's Lil Pet's go to Hawaii

This cake was chosen by Emma, the birthday girl herself and she was rather specific about how she wanted her cake designed.  The Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) animals are real toys, but the rest of the decorations were made from fondant. It was a simple Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. I  love to make these cakes and maybe even attempt sculpting the figurines. Beach cakes are so much fun!

Details: There are three single layers of cake. 9", 6" and a 4" under the tiki hut.  After I stacked all three frosted tiers, I then hand-carved the waterfall from the cakes.  I smeared chocolate ganache to the outside of the middle tier as a glue for the (Pirouette wafers) pier posts to adhere to.  The sand was then added which was made of a mixture of marble cake crumbs pulsed in a food processor and brown sugar to give it sheen.  (You cannot use straight brown sugar on buttercream it will melt. I usually prefer turbinado or raw sugar instead of plain brown sugar it is more realistic.) 

 The water was piped with a large rosette tip with buttercream swirls in multicolors-teal, sky blue and white- to mimic the ocean waves. I sprinkled a few sugar glitter flakes over the water to make it look wet and shiny. 

The tiki hut was sculpted from rice krispie treats and covered in my version of bamboo.  I made a small cut out for the LPS mouse to poke out her head. The palm trees were made from lily leaves and wired together to form a canopy.  I glued a couple of coconuts on top and carefully poked them into the round wafer trunks. The lil pup in front is surfing off the front of the waterfall right over her floating fondant birthday letters. There is a surfboard made from gumpaste with her birthday number on it and the lil kitty sits on a handmade beach towel under the homemade umbrella. Several tropical flowers were sprinkled all over the cake to add some more Hawaiian flair and color. Fun, fun, fun! I want to do it again!