Monica's First Birthday Cake

Isn't it PRETTY!!! My co-worker's little girls is having her 1st birthday party today, and the girl who was going to make the cake got sick.... so i volunteered! I figured someone paying for the supplies so I could learn was a good deal!

So how did I do it?
the cakes were the easy part. I used 3 round cake pans (with parchment paper on the bottom so they don't stick and cooked almost all of 2 boxes of cake mix with them. Once they cooled, i trimed them so they were flat and then wrapped them up in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil and froze them over night.

Then I used the fun CupCake Cake Pan to make the top cake. it uses about 1 1/2 cake mixes to fill, and you cook cake in it at 325 degrees for about an 60-65 mins.When that was done i put it in the fridge to firm up (of course i covered it in Plastic Wrap.

Meanwhile--- FONDANT!
I found this really good marshmallow fondant recipe HERE . It really is a good fondant because its pretty tasteless. Luckily i was able to borrow a friend's kitchen-aid to make it. DO NOT MAKE FONDANT WITH A HAND MIXER!! i almost killed mine. The best way i found to color the fondant was to add food coloring before you add the powdered sugar. and to get the brown color i had to use a Wilton Food Coloring from Walmart. Used the Whole thing!

Next Morning...
Woke up and started with my filling. I decided to do a 3 layer cake so i could add more filling in the middle of the cake. I came up with this genius idea while at work the other day. I took my frosting from my Oreo Cupcakes recipe but instead of using Oreo Cookies, I used Grasshopper Cookies (they taste just like Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies). YUMMY!!! So after i made that I took my cakes out of the freezer and layered them with the filling.

Then I took 2 things of creamy Vanilla frosting (store bought... i couldn't get any of my frostings to be smooth enough, and store bought worked just fine) and frosted the cake. In the fridge it went for about 30 mins to firm up, and then i used my New Frosting Spatula to smooth it out.

Setting it up for the top...
I had learned from experience with wedding cakes that you have to make sure that the top of your cake doesn't smash the rest of the cake. So i cut dowel rods to the height of my cake and then used cardboard on top of that so cupcake on top was sitting on that and not resting just on the cake. I also cut the cardboard like a Donut so once i placed the cupcake on top i could place a longer dowel all through the cake so the cupcake was more secure.

Decorating the Cake..
So now that my fondant has sat air tight all night, I cut me off a piece of it and spread it out thin with a rolling pin and cut out strips and circles. and started to decorate. Then I placed the cupcake on top and frosted the top with frosting. I used a normal spatula to get the groves on the top, but yeah... thats It! It only took me a total of 20 hours + all my practice cakes. but i love it!

My entry into the Share It Link Party at The Winthrop Chronicles is sponsored by Appliances Online and their best Range Cookers.