Laura's 8th Birthday Cake

I like to bake. I know, BIG surprise, huh? That statement is probably as obvious as "I like to breathe" would be. When an opportunity to bake comes up, I tend to jump at it, and that's what happened here.

Recently, my co-worker (who has been wonderful about giving Annika some of her daughter's hand-me-down clothes) asked if I'd be up for making her little girl's 8th birthday cake. Oh let me think .... OF COURSE! Laura, my co-worker's daughter, loves Food Network and had rather grand ideas of her cake. It had to be 3 tiers, white cake with raspberry fondant. She even sent a drawing of her desired cake to work with her mom, so I could get a good idea of what she wanted. We swapped drawings a couple of times, and I was able to walk away with the fact that Laura wanted a cake that was covered in green fondant, had lots of flowers (so each of the 14-16 party attendees could get one), had four butterflies, said "Happy Birthday, Laura" on the bottom tier, and had a vine with roses on it.

I used Laura's drawing as a guide and let it lead my design, but didn't stick 100% to it. For example, her butterflies were affixed to the cake and she probably imagined something made out of fondant; I used wire-mounted butterflies made out of synthetic feathers. I also included a few rose vines instead of a really long on that scaled all three tiers. Small details changes, but I hope that's ok with the birthday girl.

OH! And one of the best results of this project ... Eric bought me a cake leveler! (What can I say? The man is crazy in love with me!!!!) Not just ANY cake leveler, a professional one. (I TOLD you that he loves me!) Oh my goodness, but does this tool make cake stacking SOOOO much easier. It is amazing and anyone who enjoys making stacked cakes really needs to get one! It has three adjustable saw blades (they look bent in the photo, but aren't really .... just an optical illusion) and this bad boy makes torting a cake freakishly easy. Love, love, love it and don't know what I did without it! Oh wait - yes I do! I spent a lot more time trying to make my cakes level and never quite achieving that results I desired.

My new cake leveler (manufactured by FatDaddios)

I cheated and used boxed cake mixes (ok'd by my co-worker), but made up for it by making my own marshmallow fondant (instead of using store bought, non-flavor filled fondant), used raspberry filling from my favorite cake supply store (hey bakers near Seattle -make sure you support Home Cake Decorating store on Roosevelt if you ever need baking supplies!). The tiers are 8", 6", and 4" (all about 3" high).

Laura's 8th birthday cake