Homemade First Birthday Cake

My niece Katy’s first birthday was coming up, so we decided to make a homemade cake for her. We knew that we wanted it to be special, so we made this plan to try and make a 3 teared cake similar to a wedding cake, and a personal cake for our beautiful one year old. But as first timers, we had NO IDEA what we were getting ourselves in to (YouTube was our friend that showed us multiple how-to videos).

First we had to find pans in our kitchens that were the same shape and different sizes. I had ordered some on Ebay for less than $5; but they never got delivered in time. SO we scrambled to collect what we needed. Then we gathered all the ingredients, and baked 5 cakes; two bottom layers of white marble, a chocolate layer, and two chocolate marble layers. As the cakes were cooling, we made homemade marshmallow fondant. We pulled the fondant apart as it started to cool and harden into a play dough like texture; then food colored each section. Then they really looked like big play dough balls!

We started to roll out the fondant with a rolling pin that we made out of a game system drum set leg. The fondant TORE. So rolling by hand we went. Covered in Crisco, sugared powder, and now food coloring, I decided to chocolate frost the layers to get the fondant to stick to the cake. It slid and tore some more. By this time it slightly resembled a kids play dough volcano with oozing chocolate. We ended up trying to fix the tears by wiping the cake fondant with a wet rag and sticking “fondant tacky” on the holes to patch them; but the patches wouldn’t blend into the rest of the fondant.

We then decided to try and make fondant flowers with the extra we had left over- using a play dough cookie cutter. They were flimsy and stretchy, so we put them in the freezer to harden a little. We had some little flower shaped sprinkles, matching colored sprinkles, and some candy pearls; so I started decorating the cake as best I could (with frosting and cake glue) to eliminate all the holes and tears in the fondant.

We cut the owls off a gift bag and put on skewers as the cake toppers. We then put suckers on top (for all the kids) in place of candles (except for the #1 of course).Through all this we also learned that we should have cake tubes in it because it started to slide, and then hardened in a slant. It took us eight hours to fully make both cakes. Then we all pitched in and brought basic leftover party supplies to match (purple table cloth, flowered napkins, flowered paper plates, colored silverware, and pink camo cups).

We had a pot luck BBQ, and made most of her presents. Everyone LOVED the cakes we made; and to top it all off, Katy took her very first steps. Which is why I titled this “The First “- 1st birthday, 1st time making homemade fondant cake, and first steps! Happy Day!

Related cakes:

Leave a Comment Cancel reply