Bianca's Birthday Cake

There's nothing quite as delicious and adorable as tiny marshmallow fondant flowers.

Bianca's birthday is tomorrow, but she came over with her kidlet for a cook out today. I will say that constructing a cake made of sugar, sugar, and sugar is not as easy as it looks... in 92 degree heat. I had to retreat to a small room with an AC unit to finish it before it melted.

I took these (about 6 hours worth of hand sculpted marshmallow fondant flowers):



... and used butter cream icing to adhere them to a two tiered cake—an 8 inch round topped by a 6 inch round. These flowers were left to set overnight, which would have been fine except that the temperature softens them a bit. They didn't flatten, but did have a little give.



The cake itself is strawberry. And glaringly pink.



It turns out the heat, while it made some things difficult, softened the flowers to the point that they were quite pleasant to chew. Delicious.

Mya & Nate's 4th Birthday Party : June 5

Icing Face
Originally uploaded by nicciwashere

The focus on this isn't the greatest, but I couldn't pass up this photo of Nate's very serious icing face. Birthday cake is srs business, just like hunting Easter eggs (as you can see from several blog posts back).

I don't know how he managed it, but there's icing in his ear. The combo of colors on his face indicates he partook of his own cake (blue Batman), and his cousin's cake (pink princess). He's a cake man for sure.

While Nate and Mya were playing in the yard, Tony was crawling like a madmad (miniature) for parts unknown (aka the fence's edge). He paused to have his portrait made, because that's what badass babies do. I can say, "I knew him when..."



Not to be outdone, this little girl dropped by the fruit bowl every two and a half minutes to stealthily clean out all the blueberries. She had absolutely no interest in the many other fruit. I respect a girl who knows what she wants, and goes right for it!



I baked a cake for the party, with the decorating help of my lovely assistant Farmboy. We used a homemade marshmallow fondant, which is a pretty simple recipe. It's also easy to make if you don't mind kneading powdered sugar into stiff, sticky icing for about 20 minutes. I'm sure it would be more of a joy to work with given a few cutters, punches, and proper tools. (As everything usually is. The right tools go a long way.) At about 1:30 in the morning, we called it quits on making icing grass.

I hope the cake was delicious, because it was definitely made with love... and some frustration/joy that comes of trying something for the first time on a deadline. I would say the 4th birthday was a success. Sugar highs and giggles all around.