Birthday Cake

We are having Leah’s birthday party today (her birthday is actually tomorrow). And I’ve been working on her cakes this morning.

Here is the tablescape all put together:

A close up of the lady bugs – which I just think are adorable!

This is what the butterfly cake looks like – it’s just a round cake cut in half, cut outs, put back to back. I sliced a little slice off the back side of each too to make them fit together better.

The instructions for all these things can be found here: 31 Incredible Birthday Cakes.

There are a few things I did different out of necessity. Dark green muffin cups are not easy to come by. I went to 6 stores! So for the snakes I dyed the cake batter green and used mint green cups. It worked well. You can see them in the picture below. The lady bugs I used pink ones but I didn’t dye anything. They didn’t need it.

The instructions say to use mallomars for the ladybug body (and then cover in frosting) but I couldn’t find those anywhere either. I used mini cakesters. They worked perfectly – slightly bigger than mallomars I think.

If you look at the butterfly cake above you’ll see several candies are different. I couldn’t find sprees so I used these giant smarties a checker in walmart showed me. I didn’t know those things came so huge! They’re slightly alarming. I still haven’t eaten one. lol

The grass is dyed coconut. A little warm water, green dye, a little yellow – done in two batches to get multi tones.

I think everything else I did pretty much what they said. Leah loves it!

Now I’m off to finish cleaning, cook some rolls, and make a ham corn potato chowder. Yummy on this snowy day!