Birthday Cakes for Kids

If you've read any of my other hubs you know I love baking and planning parties/entertaining. I planned my daughters first birthday party recently and detailed some of my ideas in my hub, Cheap And Easy Ideas for Kids Birthday Parties.

This hub is going to focus on the cakes. I had originally planned to have the cake professionally made, until I saw the price. It was going to cost me nearly $100 for a cake to feed 20 people. Umm like most people on a budget, this was just not an option. I have baked and decorated numerous birthday cakes before, but due to time constraints and really wanting the cake to be nice I figured it would just be easier to have someone else do it. After nearly choking on that price I knew I was just going to have to push myself and my decorating capabilities and do it myself.

Gathering Your Thoughts

I started by deciding what I wanted the cake to look like and how it was going to go with the theme. The theme was easy, it was going to be froggy. In the very beginning I had wanted a pink, blue and green cake to go with the decoration colors, but as time went on and I purchased other items for the party I decided a green cake would do just fine. I then had to decide what flavor cake I wanted and how I was going to achieve the shape and texture I wanted. Was I going to carve, purchase a special pan or simply add decorations to a round or square cake? I decided to purchase a special pan.

I purchased a frog-shaped pan from Wilton. I haven't carved animals or intricate shapes from cake before and decided this was not the best time to give that a whirl. I figured as much as I love frogs, I'll probably use this pan more than once! So, my purchase was justified. However, once my pan arrived there were extra pieces of cake that I didn't want on the finished product, so I carved those off. Unfortunately not every cake recipe is good for carving, so I set out to find a recipe that would stand up to the knife.

I found a recipe for a "durable cake." It worked very well. It was moist and flavorful, but held up to carving, moving and fondant. The recipe can be found in one of my other hubs, Cake For Carving. At this point I also decided how I was going to cover my cake.

I have to tell you I hate icing a cake for decorating. I can never get the butter-cream smooth enough to suit me (I'm a perfectionist). I had never worked with fondant before, but gave it a try. I made my own fondant because I find that packaged fondant tastes a lot like the material it comes packaged in. Also, I can add flavoring to my fondant if I'd like and can control the amounts I make. I used a Marshmallow Fondant recipe.

Not only did I have to make the big cake for the party, I needed to make a cake for my cousin's son who was turning 7 and make the small cake for my 1 year old daughter to tear up. For my cousin's little boy, I made a double layer white cake with raspberry-peach filling covered in fondant decorated with his current favorite animal: an Okapi. For my daughter's "tear up" cake I made a small chocolate cake with leftover batter from the big cake and frosted with butter-cream and decorated with fondant frogs.

Getting Down To Business

All done and said, between baking the cakes, making butter-cream, fondant and decorating I had about $40 in ingredients and about 12 hours of my time. Definitely a lot cheaper than purchasing! Here's how I did it:

Friday:

Baked all 3 cakes, cooled completely on wire racks, wrapped loosely with parchment and stored away from drafts

Made fondant, wrapped in Saran wrap, placed in gallon-size ziploc and then placed in air-tight containter

Prepared butter-cream frosting, stored in airtight container

Saturday:

I began by putting the large frog cake in the freezer for about 1.5 hours to make removing the excess cake easier. I then prepared the filling for the Okapi cake.

Filling: I used 1/2 cup raspberry-peach jam and about 1/4 cup strawberry jam, heated slowly on the stove until it spread easily. Before applying to the bottom layer of the Okapi cake, I used a large tip to pipe a 1/4inch dam of butter-cream so the filling did not ooze out. Once the dam was in place, I poured the filling in and spread evenly.

Before placing the top layer on, I leveled the top with a cake leveler to make it even. I then lined the top layer up with the bottom and literally dropped it on. I do it this way so that I don't mess up the alignment and have to slide the top layer around, which makes a mess.

After the cake was stacked, I applied the crumb coat with white butter-cream. A crumb coat is simply a very thin layer of frosting to seal crumbs in to keep them from getting in the top layer of frosting or fondant. The crumb coat also helps the fondant adhere to the cake. It is important for this layer to be smooth if you're using fondant. Some people use special paper towel techniques and such to get the icing smooth, I simply use the hot water/spatula method.

The hot water/spatula method is to dip your icing spatula into hot water, remove excess water and smooth across the icing. If you're good at this you can get butter-cream to look like fondant!

Once the crumb coat on the Okapi was finished, I applied the crumb coat to the "tear up" cake and removed the big frog cake from the freezer. After carving away excess cake, I applied the crumb coat to the frog.

Decorating:

Now the fun begins. I needed to color my fondant for the big frog green. I kneaded in green gel coloring until I achieved the color I wanted. My fondant was a little stiff, but kneading in some shortening and letting it soften from the warmth of my hands made it extremely easy to work with. I rolled it with a light dusting of cornstarch to be sure nothing stuck. The frog had a lot of nooks and crannies to fill and cover. I rolled the fondant to about 1/16" thickness and centered it on the cake.

Starting from the top, I smoothed the fondant into the features, making sure not to pull and stretch the fondant too much (prevent tearing). Once I was pleased with the definition of the features, I began to smooth the fondant down the sides of the cake, making sure to remove any creases, bumps or bubbles. Finally, once the fondant was smoothed and free from blemishes, I used a very sharp knife to trim the excess fondant from the base of the cake. I didn't like the raw edge of fondant, so I used a medium star-tip to pipe a shell pattern in green butter-cream along the base of the entire cake.

To add more definition to the features of the frog, I used gel coloring to paint. I added definition to the eyes and painted on some eyelashes, blushed up the cheeks, painted a red tongue and pink mouth and then painted the lily pad pink.

Okapi Cake:

I covered the Okapi cake in white fondant. Again, the fondant was rolled to 1/16" thickness and centered on the cake. Working from the top and then down the sides I used a fondant smoother to remove creases, bumps and bubbles. Once I was pleased with how the fondant looked, I used the knife to remove excess from the base. Because the fondant was white, I used the green butter-cream to pipe the shell pattern on the base to cover the raw edge.

To get the Okapi on the fondant, I free-hand painted with gel coloring. I found a picture online and got the general likeness. I used a script-tip brush and brown coloring for the Okapi, blue for the writing and green coloring for the grass tufts. For the large areas of brown on the Okapi I used a wider-tipped brush.

Tear Up Cake:

This was probably the easiest cake to decorate. This was frosted with bright pink butter-cream. I got it as smooth as I could with the hot-water/spatula method, but as you can see, it has its imperfections. I then piped a butter-cream frog on the top using a frog cookie cutter as a template. I added eyes and a mouth with gel coloring. For the frogs on the sides of the cake, I used the same cookie cutter and cut them out of the leftover green fondant. I used a dab of butter-cream and a dab of decorator's icing to adhere them to the sides of the cake. I thought it needed a bit of something extra, so using the same star tip and blue butter-cream piped an inverted scallop pattern on the base, then stars under the "arch" of the scallop.

We had 25 people attend the party and had plenty of cake. I could probably have fed closer to 50 people with this amount of cake. In the end I was really happy I decided to make Kesiah and Isaiah's cakes. They may not have been as "wow" as a professionally-decorated cake, but the kids loved them and I felt great knowing I made them for them!