Birthday Cake!!

Parker's birthday party was yesterday (pics can be seen on The Journey to Eden).

I decided to make his superhero cake. The cake itself is not from scratch (I know, I know....but it was for kids and they don't care. Plus the decorating was time consuming so I didn't have time to make the cake and the frosting on top of it. Sorry!) He wanted chocolate, so I did the top and bottom layer chocolate and the middle layer white. Just to spruce it up, I tie-dyed it so it would look "rainbow". They thought rainbow cake was pretty cool! I just divided the batter into 5 bowls and used food coloring to color them. Then I poured them in and ran a fork around in circles to swirl it.



I used a 10 inch squares for the bottom layers (each tier has 2 layers each), 9 inch circles for the middle layer and 6 inch circles for the top layer. I baked the cakes, let them all cool and them wrapped them in Saran wrap to put in the fridge to be iced the next day. It is a lot easier to ice a cold, firm cake than a room-temperature soft cake! I also put a cake board under each of the tiers so the cake wouldn't sink. In addition, I bought lollipop sticks (you could use toothpicks) and stuck them in each layer to keep it upright and keep it from sliding.

The next day I put a crumb coat on the cakes. A crumb coat is a very thin layer of icing to catch all the crumbs. Doing a crumb cake makes a huge difference in how the cake looks. If you don't crumb coat it, inevitably you will have some crumbs here and there in your frosting that are visible. If you are just making a cake to enjoy at home this is no biggie, but if you are making one for something like this, you want it to look as smooth as possible! Here's what a crumb coat looks like....



If you are crumb coating the same day you are frosting (which I would usually do), put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes at least so the coat will harden just the littlest bit. Then when you put your frosting on, it will look smooth!




After the frosting went on, I braved the decorating. I am NOT a cake decorator by any stretch of the imagination, but I did the best I could. After all, 4 year olds don't judge, and bats and webs are pretty easy. ;)


I had put the cake on a cake board, but wrapped it in blue wrapping paper. I put a small piece of wax paper under each side of the cake to catch the mistakes.

It was far from perfect but I had a ton of fun doing it!! Happy Birthday Parker!