Princess Alicia

Ali celebrated her third birthday this weekend; just days after she became a big sister!!    This wonderful princess deserved a very special cake!!!  

The bottom tier of the cake is a chocolate cake with Oreos, fudge and buttercream fillings.  The top tier is a yellow cake with raspberry buttercream frosting.  I was told that she was having a princess themed party and that Princess Alicia wanted a pink cake.  I could do that!  Pink it was.  Lots of pink.  And purple.  And I threw in a little yellow/orange and green, just to liven it up a little.  

I hope that Princess Ali had a wonderful birthday celebration!  We were so happy we got to congratulate the big sister and celebrate with her.

My Little Princess

Today we celebrated my daughter, Josie's, 4th birthday. Her birthday usually falls right around Memorial Day weekend so we thought that celebrating a weekend early would be best. I'm certainly happy we did because the turnout was fabulous! What a treat to see so many kids having such a great time outside.

Coming up with a theme for this party was a no-brainer. Josie has been pretty fond of the Disney princesses for quite some time now and this was super fun to plan. The only potential problem I had was coming up with fun ways to engage the little boys who were attending the party. After giving it much thought I decided to make all of the kids go on a QUEST TO SAVE THE PRINCESS!!!! They were ALL loving this!

The first step of the quest was to find one of the princess' hidden jewels in the yard. Each kid just had to find one in order to go on to the next part of the quest. The big kids and the little kids had a great time with this. Easter wasn't too long ago and they all knew what to do!

The best part of the search was that it had all of the kids running around our 3/4 of an acre yard. So when they all came back to learn what their next step of the quest was, I told them that they had to kiss a frog! They ALL knew where they had seen a big frog, so we ran back to the barn to play "Pin a Kiss on the Frog". The cutest part was they all got there before I did and they all took turns actually kissing the frog! Seriously, this could not have been cuter!

After our game, the frog looked like this!

(A shout out to my mother-in-law, Marcia, who made this cute little frog prince!)

The last step of the quest was to defeat a scary dragon. I asked the kids if they had seen a scary dragon and they all rushed back to the tree where they had seen him. Each kid had at least three tries before they defeated him. And what was inside? CANDY!!!!

Their reward for completing the quest was a bucket filled with prince and princess things. The bucket came just in time to hold all of the delicious loot!

Here are the brave princes and princesses posing for a quick picture! What fun they had!

After lunch, there WAS cake (I am the Cake Mama afterall). This one was a super fun one to make. I might add that it was totally more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Humidity and fondant don't mix and making this one was no exception, but it was totally worth it. I really do love the way it turned out.

And here it is at its final destination surrounded by all of the inspiration.

The top tier (Princess Tiana) I took off before carving and froze it for Josie's actual birthday. It was a chocolate cake with Oreo buttercream. The second tier (Cinderella) was a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cake (chocolate cake, chocolate ganache filling with freshly cut strawberries). The middle tier (Princess Jasmine) was a chocolate cake with Oreo buttercream filling. The forth tier (Princess Aurora) was a Rootbeer Float cake (rootbeer flavored cake with vanilla buttercream filling). The bottom tier (Snow White) was a Banana Split Cake (banana cake with chocolate fudge and fresh strawberries and crushed pineapple).

Happy Birthday, Josephine! I love you with all of my heart!

Princess Judy

I ran into my old debate partner, Melina, from high school last month at a local park. It was so great to see her and to catch up on life. Turns out, her daughter was turning 6 and was in desperate need of a "princess cake". I was honored to take on that task for her royal highness.

There were a lot of great princess cakes out there on the Internet so getting inspired took no time at all. Melina gave me free reign on EVERYthing, including the cake flavor and colors. She just told me that her daughter, Judy, loved the color pink and her favorite princess was Cinderella.

I knew I wanted a tiara to top the cake so I first tried to make one. I melted some white chocolate in the shape of a tiara, placed some fun candy jewels in it before it hardened and molded it around a circular can. Well, unfortunately, it crumbled. So, no go on the edible tiara.

I then went to Target and found a "Birthday Girl" tiara right around the princess section of the toy department. I was THRILLED to find that. What 6 year-old doesn't need a tiara? Come ON!! So I picked that up and made the tiara the inspiration for the color scheme of the cake.

I chose a marble cake because that flavor usually pleases everyone. I filled one with pink buttercream, the other with purple buttercream and covered each cake with fondant. The bottom tier, I covered with a pink overlay to look like cloth. The top tier had a quilted effect.

I used some white buttercream to add on "pearl" necklace borders. I also made sure that the words "Princess Judy" were on there! All of the flowers were made of fondant in complimentary colors and added at the very end.

I was able to show Judy her cake when I dropped it off. Her face lit up and she was SO excited about seeing her name on the cake. I hope she has a royally delightful party!