Sunny Days for Callie!

Callie turns two today! And her parents were hosting a birthday party filled with all of her favorite Sesame Street friends.  Callie's favorite is Elmo (of COURSE) so he got the center stage for the cake.  

It's funny, Callie's mom, Stacy, is one of my dearest friends.  She and I have been close since we met in high school.  She ordered the cupcakes and only needed two characters.  She wanted Elmo cupcakes and Abby Cadabby cupcakes.  That would have been easier.  Certainly.  But these were for CALLIE.  I had to go all out.  I mixed up eight different bowls of frosting and then made this happen.    

After molding fondant and gum paste for about two hours, those cupcakes above became these cupcakes below; many of the beloved characters you'd find on Sesame Street.  Ernie, Grover, Bert, Telly, Abby Cadabby, Elmo, Rosita, Zoey, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Count VonCount, and Oscar.  It was really trippy to watch these cupcakes come alive!  Both of my girls were super excited about them and Josie added that I needed to put the green triangle on Count for his cape.  Made all the difference.  

Callie's chocolate cake is topped with an Elmo toy.  You can open up Elmo's head and it becomes a diorama of Elmo's World with an Elmo figure, an Abby figure, a wagon, a table and an easel.  SUPER cute! I couldn't wait for Callie to see THAT bonus! 

The cupcakes were gluten free made with dairy free buttercream.  I'm told that the kids devoured them, so the buttercream passed the test!  :)  The cake was chocolate with chocolate fudge, buttercream and OREO filling.

Happy Birthday, dear Callie!  I hope you have a wonderful day!  

Elmo is Made of Rainbows

The whole purpose behind my taking the Wilton Cake Decorating classes was so that I could make awesome cakes for my daughter, Josie. She is the biggest Sesame Street fan you've ever met so it was appropriate for her to have an Elmo cake for her third birthday.

I had seen a friend of mine post pictures of rainbow cupcakes that she had made for St. Patrick's Day and thought that concept would be neat for Josie's cake. I started with a WHITE cake recipe. Only a white cake will do for this because it won't affect the colors of the food coloring used to dye the batter. Each cake pan (I made two Elmo's) used 6 cups of batter. So, I separated each of the 6 cups into separate bowls, dyed them each a different color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple) and poured them into the pan and swirled.

And...voila! What a neat design, eh?

The next step was filling and crumb-coating the cakes.

And then I began to work on the colors. Getting that red took quite a bit of work and entire bottle of food coloring!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

ELMO!!!!

The guests at Josie's party were certainly surprised to see how colorful Elmo was inside!

And you can't forget about the goody-bags!!!

What a fun day!