First Birthdays

Since I seem to have babies on the brain for some reason, I decided to take a walk down memory lane and share my kids first birthday cakes with you. First, I must admit that I am not super proud of either of these cakes, as both were my first attempts at baking and decorating cakes. But if you can use either idea, than great :o) !!

My daughter's first birthday party was pink and purple themed, and this is the cake that I baked for the occasion.

All I did was bake two round cakes and stack them together with icing. For this cake I used red velvet with cream cheese icing, since this was the cake that the adults at the party ate. I then baked a dozen cupcakes in chocolate, and I used the rest of the batter to make mini cupcakes (I can't remember exactly how many I had). Once the cupcakes were cool I iced the regular sized cupcakes in pink, and the mini cupcakes in purple. After that I simply stacked 6 regular cupcakes on top of the cake using toothpick to help hold them in place. And then on top of those I stacked 6 of the mini cupcakes, again using toothpicks to help hold them in place. After that I topped them off with some "1" picks, and iced the sides of the cake to match the cupcakes. I think for my first cake decorating attempt it turned it okay.

Here is a picture of my sweet baby girl enjoying her first cake

Now for my son's first cake. His party colors were blue, red, and yellow. His cake was a little bit harder for me. I rented a "1" pan from a local cake shop, and baked a chocolate cake in it...simple enough so far. Once the cake cooled I decorated it (that was the tricky part for me). I don't know if you can see the "1" in the decorations behind the cake, but that is what I was going for. I iced the cake in a blue to match the blue in his decorations. I then piped yellow around the edge to look like stitching (again, trying to match the 1 in his theming), next I did a decorative edging in red around the border (again, trying to match the"1"). Lastly, I wrote his name in red going down the cake.

Again, I did not totally love how it turned out, but as you can tell my son REALLY enjoyed it, and isn't that what matters most ;o) ?