- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
Questions for those who baked/decorated their LO's B-day cake
Can you share what your time line looked like? For example, did you bake the cake and freeze it ahead of time? Did you make your own buttercream or fondant? How far in advance did you make the BC or fondant? Did you decorate the cake the day before or the day of? How many hours did you spend decorating it? And did you ever wonder what you got yourself into while doing it?
Sorry for all the questions 
but whatever tips you can give me to save me time will be appreciated.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Questions for those who baked/decorated their LO's B-day cake
i baked it the day before, decorated the day of. used a tub of pre-made icing. i decorated the cupcakes the night before, but the cake the day of. can't remember time spent, but it wasn't a quick process.
oh yes i wondered wtf i was thinking, but i will probably do it again.
Our party was mid March so it was still pretty cool outside. Our party was on Satuday. My Mom and I baked the cake on Thursday and stored it in our garage to keep cool. We made our own buttercream on Friday and decorated the cake on Friday. We stored it in the garage again until Saturday and it kept just fine. Decorating probably a good 5 hours start to finish. My Mom is an accomplishe decorated but this was my first real try so it took me a long time.
And just b/c I had so much fun and was so proud of the cake, here's a pic
I did a trial run for my cakes already, so I will tell you about that and what I plan to do. I am making 2 cakes, one has fondant and one is butter cream. I am making both frostings from scratch, but using a boxed cake mix. In the trial run most of my time was spent with messing around to get the consistency right on the buttercream and the fondant (this took hours). Once that was right, the actual decorating took an hour maybe, for both. The one cake is decorated using the star tip, kinda like this but on a whole cake, not just a cupcake. The fondant is a funny face with polka dots.
My plan for the party is, bake the cakes and make the frosting Thursday evening, frost them Friday evening (fondant cake will get a crumb coat only at this point) and put the fondant on the cake and serve them Sat afternoon. I am using this buttercream recipe.
We made the cakes on Thursday evening. We spent about 2 hours decorating it Friday night before the party on Saturday. We used store bought icing though because the buttercream never did turn out right. We tried several times the week before to make the icing.
His party was on a Saturday, so I took a half day on Friday to bake it while he was at daycare. I baked a sheet cake in a rectangular pan and then put a soup bowl down on the cooled cake and traced around the circle with a knife, then did the same thing a second time to make two small circles. I made the buttercream icing and iced it. My decorations weren't anything special, just some piping around the bottom and some polka dots to match the "1" candle I had.
One tip, I had put it in our beautiful round covered cake plate. Then I realized there was no way I'd put that plate in front of him on the high chair. So I moved it to a plastic plate and repiped icing around the bottom. I then covered that plastic plate with the dome from the cake plate to keep it fresh overnight. It only took a few hours, start to finish. But again, it's not like I was doing anything amazing. And I bought a cake from a bakery for the other guests, I just made Adam's.
Thanks for this post! I'm going to work on DD's practice cake today. I have NEVER decorated a cake before and am not very crafty. Good question and good tips. Thanks!