elmo cake

Even though we didn't have a birthday party for my daughter Melodie's second birthday, I still wanted to make her a cake, to match the cookies and cupcakes that I made for her celebration at daycare.  So I made a cake in the shape of Elmo's face!

I wanted to try something other than chocolate cake, and decided to make a brown sugar cake from Martha's "Cupcakes" book.  I divided the batter in half and used this Elmo cake pan to bake each half of the batter, one half at a time.

Once both cakes were baked and cooled, I began making the filling.  Since I knew that the brown sugar cake was going to be pretty sweet, I wanted the filling to be light. so I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting, and then lightened it with a batch of freshly whipped cream.

For the frosting, I made a batch of cream cheese buttercream (basically a batch of buttercream frosting with a stick on cream cheese added to it).  Then after frosting Elmo's eyes with the white frosting using an offset spatula, I divided the rest of the frosting it into portions, and colored the them red, orange, and black.  Then I filled in Elmo's eyeballs and mouth with black frosting using a piping bag fitted with a #5 tip.  Next was Elmo's face with red frosting using a piping bag fitted with a star tip, and finally Elmo's nose with orange frosting using the offset spatula.

Melodie loved her Elmo cake!  Although I thought it was a little too sweet.  Also, the next time I make an Elmo cake, I think I'd flatten out the piping on the eyes and the mouth.

And now I'll leave you with a picture of the birthday girl, eating her cake!

elmo cupcakes and elmo ice cream cake

I can't believe my little boy Matthew turned four today!  Last year I made Cars cupcakes for this third birthday, and the year before that I made these Elmo cupcakes for his second birthday (please excuse the poor lighting on these old pictures!).

I made two dozen of these and served them at his preschool birthday party - chocolate cupcakes using my favorite homemade chocolate cake recipe, with a quick cream cheese frosting, and plastic Elmo rings as toppers so the kids could play with them after they were done eating their cupcakes.

Then that weekend, we had a small party at Chuck E Cheese, and I made my first ice cream cake ever.  It was a layer of chocolate cake, with a layer of homemade mint oreo ice cream ...

... and topped with vanilla buttercream.  And then I piped Elmo on top.  It was my first time piping a character, so it could have used some work.  But it was freehand!  And my first Elmo.

In any case, this started an obsession with making ice cream cakes (most of them Hello Kitty cakes).  Although now that we have two kids, ice cream cakes have fallen to the bottom of my to-do list when it comes to baking.  They just take so long!  And they are high maintenance, mainly because you have to constantly return the cake to the freezer several times in between piping, in order to keep the ice cream layer from melting.  Not to mention the complications with transporting an ice cream cake!

This is like the only picture I have of the inside of the cake, but you can get an idea of what it looked like.

This year Matthew requested Superman for his birthday, so stay tuned for some upcoming Superman goodies!