Ocean & Belly Cakes

You've heard of maxing out credit cards... maybe maxing out the space on your hard drive with all those digital pics you're always snapping...maxing out your vacation day allotment at work (what are you waiting for - get going on that trip you've always wanted to take!)... but have you ever heard of maxing out your fridge? Well I'm here to tell you that it can be done. I officially maxed out my refrigerator this week with two celebration cakes for events occuring on the same day. They were both 10" rounds, 3 layers high decorated with fondant. We were eating leftovers and conjuring up meals that used up whatever I could in our fridge just to make space... It was challenging. I may be a baker but coming up with delicious, interesting meal ideas doesn't come naturally to me...

So this week, I made two celebration cakes - one birthday cake for a 7-year old friend of my daughter's and one baby shower cake for a dear friend of mine whom I have known since high school.. This friend, whom I'd never thought would have children, is now nearing the birth of her first child. It's awesome news... and cause for celebration with this adorable "baby belly" cake.. I'd seen some pictures of these cakes on cakecentral.com and knew I had to make one! This particular cake was chocolate with a strawberry filling frosted in vanilla buttercream. They were accompanied by baby block cookies.

The birthday cake was for a girl who is a friend of my daughter's from ballet class. Her mother ordered an ocean-themed vanilla cake filled and frosted with chocolate buttercream. Additionally, they requested dolphin cookies as favors. We were so bummed we couldn't attend the party, but I hope she had a wonderful day and that the cake lived up to their expectations! :-) Happy Birthday, Ava!

I've mentioned before that preparing a celebration cake is not easy. It involves patience, creativity, lots of time and the ability to think outside the box. The best way to become good at this is practice, practice, practice. As I do more and more of these cakes, I feel more capable and confident and understand the different elements involved on a much greater level. I hope the two parties enjoyed the cakes as much as I enjoyed putting them together. :-)

As you could imagine, I had quite a bit of leftovers - both cake and frosting. I made cake pops with them. Flipping through Bakerella's Cake Pops book, my daughter selected the chicks. They were perfect - not too difficult to throw together, given all the time I'd spent in the kitchen this week. I didn't have yellow coating chocolate so we covered them in the next best color - pink!