I love planning events, whether it's a fundraiser, wedding or a birthday party. So each year when Claire's birthday rolls around I can't wait to think of a fun theme and getting decorations, food, and cake all planned.
This year Claire has been getting deep into Disney Princesses, one of her favorite's is The Little Mermaid. I'm not big into character parties so I thought I would take a concept from The Little Mermaid and make that her party - so Under the Sea was the theme. It was a great theme for a summer birthday and for our family since we love the water.
Decorations were pretty easy for this party - I decided to make a "scale" background using different color plates, seaweed with green streamers, and bubbles with clear balloons. All this was cost effective and easy to set up the morning of the party.
Last year, Claire had an amazing taco cake that someone Chris works with made for her. This year I wanted to try my hand at making and decorating her cake, but I still wanted it to look amazing.
I am by no means a baker or cake decorator - in fact I'm pretty awful at it. So, I decided to make a practice cake the week prior to test out my skills and learn some tricks along the way.
I found a cake on Pinterest for my inspiration. The website was very helpful, listing tools used, giving step by step instructions, and ingredients. The one trick I ran into was Claire telling me she wanted a rainbow cake... How was I going to do this? Rainbow didn't really go with the color scheme I had planned.
I thought about doing a colored layered cake, but as I was looking for "rainbow" cakes I came across marbled cakes - DING! So I asked Claire what colors she wanted her "rainbow" cake to be. Luckily she replied with Blue, Pink and Purple - colors that went great with the theme.
The practice cake took about 3 days to finish. I baked and frosted the cakes the first day, then made the gum paste decorations on day 2, and finally decorated the cake on day 3. While the practice cake turned out pretty well, I'm definitely glad I did a practice cake. I figured out quite a lot while making that cake and found some easier ways to make the final cake even better.
I was so incredibly proud of how Claire's final cake turned out. I looked and tasted great and made me want to try making more cakes in the future.
Happy 3rd Birthday to our princess! We love you!
