Thursday, February 28, 2002

Sydney's First Birthday (February 2002)



Nancy asked me to do a cake for her daughter's first birthday. I was kinda nervous about screwing it up, because not only do I work with Nancy, but I share an office with her. So I was thinking about doing something pretty but simple, like a Wilton character pan, maybe Tweety Bird or a rocking horse, but Nancy had her mind set on a turtle, so I figured ok, I'll give it my best shot. Then, a day or so later, Nancy thought maybe she'd want cupcakes instead of a cake. She wasn't sure whether this was going to be for Sydney's daycare center on Friday, or for the family gathering the next day. In the end, she decided to go with both. Her main instruction was to incorporate bright colors (no problem there, for those of you who know me!)

For the cupcakes, I had all these ideas and couldn't decide which one to do, so I ended up doing all of them. Or most of them, anyway. I made 2 each of a lady bug, a bumble bee, a cloudy blue sky, green grass, a watermelon, wild flowers, and a lady's face. They all turned out great, I think, and Nancy was very happy with them. From the pix below, you can see that the kids were too. :)

The turtle cake wasn't anywhere near as difficult as I was afraid it would be. I found a photo of a turtle cake on the web and tried to copy the design the best I could. I baked the shell in two parts. Most of the shell was chocolate cake baked in a glass bowl, and then to add some cake, I stacked it on top of a 9" round yellow layer. I baked the chocolate cake at 325 degrees instead of 350 because I was afraid otherwise the sides of the cake would be burned by the time the center was done cooking. The head is made of pieces of the remaining yellow layer, cut into circles and stacked up to make a dome shape. The feet and tail are just globs of icing. I love the colors of this cake, too, and Nancy said it matches one of the rooms of her house, which is pretty cool.

Problems: I had no major problems, beyond the initial sheer panic of whether I'd be able to actually do the turtle or not. I had a slightly difficult time getting the turtle's head to behave properly, but it worked out in the end. Even Dan liked it.

Thanks to Nancy for all the photos!