So there's this super cute little blue eyed boy I know who just turned 1. We've been friends with his parents for quite awhile and often spend our "date nights" at their house shooting nerf guns with big sister. His mommy had it all planned for a paw patrol party and asked me for help on the cupcakes. Well, she had a great idea on those and didn't need my help at all!
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| Final product! |
The smash cake on the other hand...I'm at work at the hospital the day before the party when I get a text saying she needed my help. Then I get a message with a video of the cake in the oven. It looks like it's about to explode out of the pan and is quite jiggly. I tell her to go ahead and keep baking it to try to firm it up. It works. Mission accomplished, right?
Not quite. I go over there when I get off work and the cake is still in the pan and no cupcakes have been frosted. We discuss the best way to get these cupcakes frosted nicely without my cupcake gun. There was a little misunderstanding and it didn't make it to their house. Based on how she had decided to decorate the cupcakes we went with the ziplock bag with a corner cut off. She did great with decorating them very neatly. Big sister helped too! We set those aside and take look at the cake.
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| See the little pawprint? |
It's a pan with slightly sloped sides. The original plan was just to frost in in blue. Considering the sloped sides and super puffy top I suggested making it into a big cupcake. Then *lightbulb* lets do a dog bowl!! It is a paw patrol party after all the cake is the perfect shape. We were extra careful trying to get it out of the pan in one piece but there was still a little breakage. I was able to fix it for the most part. I cut out a little bit of the center to make the bowl. Now for the hard part- the frosting. I can't frost cakes. That is why I always do cupcakes. No crumb coat to worry with. No dragging a spatula across to smooth the sides. I surprised myself with this one. It wasn't easy but I managed to get the sides and the lip of the bowl decently smooth.
It's at this point that I decide if this thing is going to look right I really need some tools from my house. So we head to my house to pick up my fondant tools, some fondant, and the cupcake gun for good measure. We run by Walmart to grab some food coloring and frosting and on the cake aisle we see the cutest little cookie cutters. There is a dog bone shape and a couple other shapes that would be perfect for this party. I joked "Don't you want to make some cookies too?"
We make it back to their house and I roll out my fondant to make the little nameplate for the bowl. Notice how it's a bone shape. Notice how I freehanded it? Yeah I really regretted not thinking quickly enough to grab those cookie cutters :( It honestly wasn't bad though. I got the bone cut out (there may or may not have been some off color jokes made by the guys during this process) then colored some more fondant to spell out LUKE. At this point I had some black fondant left so I decided to make paw prints to add to the bowl. While those were drying a bit I used the cupcake gun just to pipe a border along the bottom of the cake.
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| Mommy and sister helped him out a little |
Then I used a little of the extra frosting to stick the fondant pieces to the sides. The name plate was a little heavy so I propped it up with toothpicks. We filled the bowl with cocoa pebbles and we have a dog bowl!
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| He had to test it with his toes first |
-Happy birthday Luke, and happy baking!
