This has been the year of the birthday cake for me. In the past, I have always served cupcakes for my kids’ birthdays. Seriously, always. Want to see?
Hello Kitty Cupcakes
Superhero Cupcakes
Minnie Mouse Cupcakes
Oh, wait! There was that one time I served ice cream. See, I branched out. Once.
This year for Aidan’s birthday, I attempted my first birthday cake. The sprinkle cake. It was super cute, but holy bouncing sprinkles, Batman! I found those all over the kitchen for MONTHS. When it’s time to replace the stove in this house, they’ll probably find the rest.
Sprinkle Cake
We didn’t throw a big birthday party for either child this year, so I figured I could expend a little extra energy on their birthday cakes. Neely would have had a Lalaloopsy birthday party if we’d had one, so I made her a Lalaloopsy cake.
Lalaloopsy Cake
Pretty cute, right? It was a little bit time consuming, but not ridiculously hard. That’s two boxes of cake mix, baked into four layers. I used strawberry and white cake, alternating them to make pretty pink and white stripes on the inside. You could use, like, whatever. 😉
I use this marshmallow frosting recipe for EVERYTHING. It’s on all those cupcakes in the pictures. I actually didn’t use it on the sprinkle cake, but I wish I had. I went with buttercream for that one, and it’s too rich and heavy for my taste. Again, though, use whatever is your favorite.
The buttons are made from marshmallow fondant. Here is a recipe, and this is a tutorial for how to cut out the button shapes. I made a bunch of them last week, so they were ready to place on the cake on the actual birthday.
The pink sparkly #5 candle came from the party section at Target. The mini Lalaloopsy dolls also came from Target. The wooden thread spools came from the crafts section at Hobby Lobby. I used double-sided tape to hold brightly colored embroidery floss onto them.
I was happy with the finished cake. Neely was very excited about it, and that was the most important thing. I can’t swear that I won’t serve up another platter of cupcakes in the future, but I’m glad I’ve moved beyond my cake making fear.
Snap. Eat. Run. 