Oh! Another Birthday Cake!

We had another birthday in our family last week. :) Our youngest little grandson turned ONE. That's always a happy milestone and in true Grammie tradition, I wanted to make it special.

In a previous post, I have shown some other birthday cakes I've enjoyed making for my little grandsons, and this latest came the day after my spring show.

I had the thought to make a carousel cake but wasn't able to find a simple one that was pictured in my mind when I googled. When my sister was a young child I remember our neighbor making her one. My sweet mother even dug through pictures trying so we could remember what it looked like, but we didn't have a very good closeup so I could see details.

I finally found enough to get me going. This was one of the easiest cakes I've done and it was really a lot of fun.

I started off by baking a two layer cake mix in two 8" round pans. I freeze the layers because it frosts better if frozen. I made homemade frosting and tinted it blue.

Now that I'm posting about it, I realize that even though I've been blogging since late October, I still have a lot of room for improvement. I keep forgetting to take pictures when I'm in the midst of a project, so I am having to reinact this one.

First step is to make the canopy for the carousel.

Take a dinner plate and trace on top of wrapping paper. I actually had some with little animals on it in my wrapping paper box. The Lord is with me!

Next, I traced the plate on top of a gift wrap box to give it a little stability.

Being somewhat of a perfectionist on things like this, I wanted the bottom to be complete so I traced two of the wrapping paper.

Next I used a glue stick and glued the top of the paper to one side and the another layer of gift wrap to the underside of the gift box circle. Take scissors and make one slit from outer edge to the center of the circle. This allows you to form a canopy shape. I used hot glue to secure this form.

On my craziness trying to pull my spring show off, I didn't have a lot of time to search for old fashioned stick candy like I wanted, so I used straws instead. I cut off the bendable part because it would be too flimsy. Next I hot glued the blue and white ribbon around the straws to give it a more finished look. I needed a center pole....thinking...thinking...thinking... I went down to my workroom and found a slender bamboo pole which I cut to make the pole. I tied the matching ribbon into a bow just for cuteness sake. Next I selected the best looking animals I could find from the misformed animal crackers in a bag. I used frosting to attach the animals to the straws at different heights. Think merry go round. I had purchased these colorful "reception sticks" when I was desparately looking for stick candy. They were too little to use as the poles, but being so perfect for the look I was going after, I stood them up around the center pole just because I felt they added. I dug into the Easter candy. Perfect! The colored malted milk balls would work for decorative trim. I used one single white one for the tip top. I used some cake sprinkles and a candle that said 1

and I now had a cake that was perfect for my latest grandson to stick his fingers in to. Don't you just love those frosting pictures of little one year olds??