The Cake

If you know me at all, you know I love to make cool cakes for my kids on their birthdays. It's a lot of work, but it's certainly a labor of love, and I enjoy delighting Luken and Keeley with something special!

I usually search for some inspiration and then hem and haw over my options for weeks leading up to the big day, dreaming something up and then trying to figure out how to make it a reality.

I really wanted a realistic octopus for his octopus-themed birthday - not something cartoonish or babyish. I had hoped to find some cool mold that would make things easy, but no such thing exists that I could put MY hands on, so I had to figure it out all on my own.

I was pretty happy with what I came up with! I managed to sculpt an octopus out of fondant, modeled after the original "Hard Stripey!" I also found some sea animal candy molds online and made a few dozen for the cake and also a batch of cupcakes.

The cake was a chocolate sour cream cake from the folks who do America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated. I had made this cake for a friend's baby shower a couple of months ago, and everyone loved it, so maybe it's now my signature chocolate cake! :P

So, without further ado, here are my creations!


The Cake:












The Cupcakes: (thanks to Carol for baking these up for me!)
















And, yes, I am a big ol' nerd and did a full-on photo session with these, complete with off-camera softboxed flash! :D I'm all about the photos - once I have them, I feel no pain when the cake is demolished!
And I realize my watermarks are all funky, but I didn't crop these photos the way I normally do - oh well!