Well, Miss A has turned one and we’re having a party on Sunday… So much to do, so much to do!

It’s nearing midnight and I have a few things left to do so here is a summary in pics!

Priority number 1 – make the cake! I believe that making my girls’ birthday cake is a rite of passage that I have to go through.  My sister in law is a professional cake maker and decorator.  She offered many times to make these cakes – for Miss B as well as Miss A.  But I’ve refused so far and have done them myself!  Here’s how it went!

 

Recipe for the white cake here

 

Three pans prepped for three layers

Cheating with the Thermomix rather than a mixmaster – but the batter was too big so had to put it into the mixmaster and then add the flour.

 

Batter evenly distributed

Cakes cooling

First pass at the frosting – I learnt this is called the crumb layer of frosting

Starting to create the petals

Slow and steady wins the race

Nearly done!

And now in the fridge for tomorrow!

But the evening wasn’t without its challenges. I used the frosting recipe in the ‘add a pinch’ recipe, but the minute I added the cream the first batch of butter cream ‘broke’.  I did not know such a think existed but yes, it can happen.  There are a number of ways to ‘rescue’ it with one of those methods putting chocolate in it to fluff it back up. So I gave that a go.  It worked quite well but man oh man, was it sweet, which I found ironic as I tried so hard with Miss B’s birthday to avoid sugar and made sugar free treats and cake.  This time around I used 3kg of icing sugar, including to mucked up batch below! Sugar overload!

But, I ended up making little take-home treats and used the recovered icing for these:

‘Ice-cream’ cakes to give as gifts – in the oven

Wasn’t sure how they’d turn out but they worked!

Icing these was a lot harder than I expected but the end result look great!

And that’s been my day! Stay tuned for a pic tomorrow of the end result!

Do you go all out for birthday parties? Do you make your own cake?