Baby Z's 1st Birthday Cake

So I thought I'd do a little post on the cake I made for Baby Z's birthday party. At first I was contemplating doing another fondant covered cake, maybe a ruffle cake like this:

Beautiful ruffle cake by It's A Cake Thing

But then I decided I wanted to make a smash cake to go along with the main birthday cake. I'm sure you've all seen the adorable photos of babies with their own little smash cakes, well I wanted to join the craze, BUT I had this crazy idea in my head of incorporating the smash cake into the main cake as the top tier. I hadn't really seen this before, most smash cakes I've seen are separate cakes next to the main cake.

Well this complicated the logistics for making the cake somewhat. In order to create the best effect and 'photo op', smash cakes should be covered just in buttercream, not fondant. If I was going to use the smash cake as the top tier then the entire cake really needed to be buttercream, otherwise it wouldn't look right (well, I couldn't think of two designs I wanted to do that would work together, there are a lot of other people out there who have successfully incorporated the two styles though!). Then I decided that I needed more practice doing buttercream covered cakes anyway and this would be a perfect opportunity.

So then I was looking at these gorgeous rosette cakes:

This gorgeous Rosette cake is actually a fake cake for sale on Etsy!! Isn't that bizarre?! Lol

BUT then I didn't like any of the two tier examples I saw AND couldn't get other the fact that it looked much prettier in pink :(
So then I came across this beautiful pastel swirl cake from one of my bloggy idols, Sweetapolita, and fell in love...

Aww isn't it so sweet??!

I also used my fail-safe eggless chocolate cake for no reason other than the fact that I was craving chocolate and thought it would look pretty layered with the buttercream once smashed all over the floor hehe.

So there you have it, Baby Z's 1st Birthday cake:

Baby Z's 1st Birthday Party

Ok so I know that I said I was going to post up some tutorials for the decorations I was making for Baby Z's birthday party but what else can I say other than I suck?? I've been incredibly busy over the past month with catching up on studying, family stuff, being unwell, etc so I haven't really had time to do a whole bunch of tutorial posts. Fortunately all the decorations were very easy and straightforward so I'll simply explain each of the decorations.

For Baby Z's birthday I wasn't planning on a huge party with lots of invited guests etc. We don't really know too many people here in Canberra, other than family, and I definitely don't know anyone with kids Z's age so I decided to simply hold an intimate family luncheon and invite over a few close family members.

 

This is the birthday cake I made using Sweetapolita's pastel swirl method - I probably could have swirled the sides a bit more to achieve a nicer finish, but was running short on time! The top tier I made so it could be lifted off the main cake and used as a smash cake. I used my eggless chocolate cake recipe with pre-made Wilton buttercream - which I DEFINITELY won't be using again!!! It was super sickly sweet, ugh, but definitely easy! I wasn't happy with how the plaques turned out, I was trying out a method that didn't work too well, next time I would probably pipe directly onto the plaques rather than using my edible ink markers.

 

I made this adorable mini cake bunting using double sided scrapbooking paper, string and mini bamboo skewers I found in the local dollar store. I also made the mini pinwheels using double sided scrapbooking paper, and used a sewed on bead to close the centre.

Using double sided scrapbooking paper I made these pinwheels, with silver star shaped pins in the centre. I hot-glued them onto dowels (which means they don't turn like normal pinwheels - but I didn't need them to be functional!) and used these cute glass soda bottles I found at a local dollar store for $1.50 each. I tied a pretty ribbon bow around each bottle.

You can't see his jumpsuit too well in this photo unfortunately, I ordered it online from Cheekee Monkeez. It says Z is for Zavien. A had a matching long sleeve shirt that says A is for Alakai. I'll try to get better photos when they come out of the wash - if the cake washes out lol!!

Stand of half eaten buttermilk scones. I used a flower cutter to cut them out since I couldn't find my round cutters, they looked super cute! They were served with strawberry jam and whipped cream. Yum!!

 I found instructions online for folding napkins into the shapes of button-up t-shirts. The instructions are for cloth napkins but worked perfectly for these paper napkins I bought. I topped each napkin off with one of the tissue paper pom poms I made earlier.

I strung up some of the nicer photos of Baby Z all the way from when I was still pregnant to now. Everyone really liked looking through these photos and I gave each of the grandparents and great-grandparents an envelope with their own copies of the photos to take home.

The smash cake was a definite success! The grandparents were all a little bit horrified at first lol but were definitely amused watching Baby Z's disgust at having dirty hands!! (He doesn't like having dirty hands and kept stopping to try and shake off the icing!)

The menu:
Cucumber and herbed cream cheese tea sandwiches
Red pepper, basil pesto and feta tea sandwiches
Smoked salmon tea sandwiches
Pumpkin and winter vegetable soup with crusty bread
Crispy noodle salad with Asian vinaigrette dressing
Scones with jam and whipped cream
Birthday cake!!

A few of the guests had special dietary requirements so I kept food fairly simple and stuck to vegetarian options. Since there weren't many people and we were all close family I decided not to go overboard with a lot of different options.
I served the soup in individual coffee cup portions, everyone commented on what a good idea it was as it gave you a perfect amount, not enough to fill you up so you can't gorge on scones and sandwiches and cake, but enough to make everything into a substantial lunch.
The sandwiches were gobbled up very quickly, everyone really enjoyed them! The smoked salmon ones were kept very simple, just salmon on bread, no butter or anything else as they were for a couple of the grandparents who have very strict dietary requirements. I'll have to post the recipe for the herbed cream cheese, it was soooo good!!

It was a lovely day spent with close friends and family, and I'm now starting the planning process for A's 4th birthday - only 5 months away!!! Lol!

DIY Pom Pom Decorations

Yes, I know what you're thinking. I'm crazy. I still have one and a half months till Z's first birthday and I'm ALREADY making decorations. For a birthday party for a 1 year old. For a birthday party that will ONLY have close family for guests. Close family that visit us nearly every week anyway and so this 'party' isn't really anything special since they'll probably be coming over that day anyway.

But one thing you should know about me, and I'm sure you'll figure it out over the next 1.5 months. I'm a bit crazy about parties. And decorating. And birthdays and cakes and dinner parties and tea parties and all of the above.

The invitations I created with Photoshop. Private information blanked out for obvious reasons.

So. That should just about bring you up to date. Onto the pom poms.

I'm not going to bother doing a tutorial on these pom poms. Do a Google search and you'll find hundreds already out there. The dimensions I used when cutting out the tissue paper for these pom poms was 10cmx20cm. That gave me the perfect mini pom poms to decorate each place setting at the table. I changed my mind about the color scheme after ordering the invitations so instead of making these in navy blue I used a pale Tiffany blue.

Actually, that's a lie. I spent 3 hours making a whole bunch of these in navy blue and silver only to decide afterwards that I didn't actually like the navy blue, or the size, or the pom poms themselves, so I started again. DH told me I was crazy. My FIL just made a couple of patronizing comments about how it was all a waste of time for a 1 year old anyway. I ignored them both.

I made half of the pom poms with curved outer edges and the other half with spiked edges. The first of the spiky pom poms came out awesome, but the way they were cut made an optical illusion that made them look smaller than the other pom poms so I had to make less dramatic spikes on the rest of them. In the end you can barely see the difference. If I were to do it again I would have cut the spiky ones as 11cmx22cm and made the spikes sharper.

I'll have to do a follow-up to show you how I intend on using the mini pom poms.