Happy Birthday Sofia!

We celebrated Sofia's birthday with a big Princess party last Saturday. Her actual birthday was on the 20th, but with the weather being a bit unpredictable these days (so unusual for California for this time of the year) I chose not to wait and celebrate it the weekend before. It was really adorable to see all these little princesses running around the park in their costumes!
Joe had bought her a Cinderella dress for the occasion, complete with staff and tiara. I went and got her her "glass slippers" aka. silver sparkle shoes, to complete the look. Oh, you should have seen her face when we presented her with the dress the morning of the party! The look on her face was priceless as you can see in this little clip we took of her.

I love surprising her like that, it makes my day. And Joe admitted having had a lot of fun buying the dress and accessories for her!

Preparations for her party had started about a month before, or maybe even more, because I started researching online, what type of cake I should make for her. Some of you know, that I really like baking, but for her birthday I chose to do something I had never done before. I was debating between a Princess cake or a Castle cake, in 3D, meaning standing up, not lying flat. At this point, I had no idea of how many people would be at the party, but as my preparations got more specific, I realized I needed a bigger cake, the Princess cake wouldn't cut it. The worst would be to run out of cake at the party, right? So I decided on the Castle cake. I asked Sofia what color it should be in, and naturally, she said, "Pink!"

I decided that I needed to do a cake trial first. I was going to work with fondant, and for that I needed to practice. This turned out to be a good idea, because on my first attempt, I failed miserably. I had rolled it out too thin and it started tearing everywhere. I also needed a really delicious cake, that wasn't too dry but dense enough for me to cut and shape. I decided on a Victoria cake, which basically consists of flour, butter, 6(!)eggs and sugar. That's it. This cake is really easy to flavor, which I did, because even though Sofia said she wanted a Vanilla cake, I felt it necessary to also make a chocolate one.
Working with fondant turned out to be such a fun thing! It's basically a sugar mass (you can buy it already made by Wilton) that is very soft and malleable. Some day I'd like to try making my own, which will probably taste much better. It's also super easy to color it any shade you want, by kneading in some food color gel. I decided I needed some little flowers and leaves to decorate the cake later on, so this gave me good practice in coloring and shaping. The best part of it all, it's edible!
Thursday came around and I needed to start baking my cakes. I was really happy, that for part of this, Sofia was in preschool, because she ended up being a little neglected by me for all the cake preparation.
Friday morning the electronic Babysitter (aka TV) had to come on, because it was time to shape and fill the cakes and also coat it with a delicious vanilla butter cream. I chose a simple whipped cream filling, in which I added frozen mixed berries for the chocolate cake and fresh strawberries for the vanilla cake. I also used a red currant jelly to coat the bottom layer of the cakes. I really wanted raspberry jelly, but couldn't find one (I didn't want the seeds) but the red currant turned out really nice. It gave a little bit of a tangy, fresh kick to the whole cake, very yummy! Coating the cakes with the butter cream turned out a bit of a challenge for me as well. Again, I had never done this before, and actually doing it versus just reading about it was a whole different story! I did a fairly decent job, but it could have been smoother. I didn't bother with it, because it was going to get covered with my fabulous pink fondant.








Setting up the fondant for the side.





That same night it was time to decorate my cakes. I had a 9x13 sheet cake, two 3 layer towers, two turrets, made with cake filled ice cream cones, and a 5 inch topper to cover and decorate. With the help of Joe and Carmen (our Swiss exchange student, who is staying with us until the end of the month) we rolled, cut, squeezed, colored, shaped, and "glued", until about 1am in the morning! The end result was quite a sight to see, in fact, I was REEEAAALLLY happy with the whole cake! It turned out so beautiful! My biggest concern though, was would it also taste good? It did! The cake was really flavorful and moist, but dense enough to hold shape, mmm, so delicious!

Mommy and Papa at work.



One of the towers up close. I piped on some vines with chocolate frosting. Pretty!



Here is the whole cake put together the day of the party. I have to say, I'm proud of myself. It turned out really beautiful, and most of all, Sofia LOVED it!