Hayley's Birthday Cake ~ The Second of Two Little Mermaid Cakes

If you read my previous post, then you know that my kids each get two separate birthday cakes. One is for the day of their birthday and one for their birthday party which usually falls the weekend after their birthday. For this cake, her party cake, Hayley chose the colors she wanted and basically designed the cake. She is a very creative 4 year old, which I love. There are a few mistakes with the cake though. One is the fondant flowers I made, or attempted to make. This summer in New Hampshire was quite humid to say the least and as a result, the fondant flowers did not make it! But, luckily, the candy coral did!

I've made this castle cake using Wilton's Romantic Castle Cake Set, which I have used several times over the last few years. I love it because of it's versatility. There are many ways to build the castles, but the one you see in my photo is as creative as I've been with it. I made the candy coral with royal icing and there is even a piece of coral in the shape of an "H" for Hayley, which she spotted right away. It is the one thing she talked about most when it came to the cake! It always amazes me what my kids find to be the best part of something. It usually isn't what I expect! The bottom layer is a 10" cake and the top layer is a 6" cake. To get the layers tall enough, I torte them and fill them. The bottom layer is 3 layers and the top layer just 2.

I finally found a way to get the towers to stand in the back. According to Wilton's directions, they recommend using candy melts to hold lollipop sticks to the bottom of the towers. I am sure I keep doing something wrong, but that never works for me. So I tried something new this year. I used Royal Icing to stick wooden skewers to the backs of the towers that extended 2 to 3 inches below the bottom of the tower. Now if I were displaying the cake in a place that you could see the backside, this wouldn't work. But since no one would see the back of the cake, this worked perfect. None of the towers leaned, wobbled or fell off (this has happened in previous years!). I was quite excited!

Here are some links to things I used to make this cake:
Wilton Round Cake Pan Set
Wilton Romantic Castle Cake Set
Wilton's Recipe for Royal Icing

Hayley's Birthday Cake ~ The First of Two Little Mermaid Themed Cakes

It is really hard to believe that Hayley has turned 4. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital! But, it is not hard to believe that she chose to have a birthday cake with a Disney princess theme. All four of her birthdays have been themed the same. For her first birthday, she had all the princesses, for her second birthday, it was Ariel, for her third birthday, it was Sleeping Beauty and this year was Little Mermaid again. For birthdays around here, I always have two celebrations. One on the actual birthday with just the five of us and then one on the following weekend which we share with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. It makes a lot of work to make two separate cakes, but it is worth every bit of effort!

For Hayley's actual birthday, she chose to have an Ariel cake. Luckily, I already had the Wilton Ariel Cake Pan from last time and all the Disney Princess and Little Mermaid Wilton colors for the frosting. The best thing this year when making this cake is that my daughter helped decorate it, as well as my husband. It was so fun with all of us doing something together . . . maybe my daughter will be the next Cake Boss! ;-)

Hayley chose to have yellow cake this time around and after frosting the cake, we added the candy seashells (you can see my previous post about making the seashells)around the edge. Of course, as we went to add the "4" candle to the cake, I had to convince Hayley that on Ariel's left eye was probably not the best spot and luckily, since I hadn't taken any pictures yet, I was able to convince her that in the hair would be better!

Here are some links to the items I used to make the cake:
Ariel Cake Pan (by Wilton)
Disney Princess Icing Colors (by Wilton)
Little Mermaid Icing Colors (by Wilton)