ALL CAKED OUT

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER & PAIGE

DAX'S FIRST BIRTHDAY MICKEY GUITAR AND SNARE DRUM

Last night was the mother of all marathon cake baking nights.  These 3 cakes were ordered for birthday parties for the same day, same time.  Let's just say that I didn't get to go to bed.  The final touches were put on the last cake one hour before the birthday party. 

The Hawaiian cake was for the birthday party of Allison's classmate/s Peter and Paige for their 5th and 6th birthdays.  The cake was vanilla filled strawberry and lemon with vanilla/almond buttercream.  The only inedible parts were the tiki hut, trees and umbrella.  The seashells were made from fondant using a chocolate moulde.  Flowers were fondant, Peter and Paige and large flowers were modeled from gumpaste.  The "sand" for the island were crushed graham crackers.  This cake was fun to make, and relativly quick to put together.  They both loved it.

The guitar and snare drum was for a little boy named Dax's first birthday.  The guitar was a vanilla cake, filled strawberry and lemon, while the drum was chocolate cake, filled with chocolate, iced with tinted buttercream.  A total of 10 1/2 hours were spent on these 2 cakes from very start to finish.  In the end, I was pleased with the way they came out.  Although I think that the cakes were much more pretty in person than in these pictures. 

The drum/smash-up cake was one of the first total iced buttercream cakes I've made, as you can see I'm not up to the supergenius level when working with buttercream YET :)

I tried to give the guitar realistic touches, such as piping the strings the same way as a real guitar is strung with larger strings at the top, going smaller towards the little e., and making the fret board with the star fret finders, tuning keys and "ivory" bridge.