I cannot believe that a year has already passed. It has been one amazing year though! Little Gracie has completely changed my family's life. She brings so much love and laughter to our world.
I was looking back at the cake I made for her baby shower, before she was even born, (here) and cannot believe how far I have come making cakes too. In just a years time my skills have gotten so much better. It really is amazing what one year can do. It can turn an average caker into an intermediate one, and can turn just a little speck of life in someones belly into an adorable, funny and beautiful baby!
My sister-in-law, Portia wanted a brown, pink and white theme for the party. So when it came time to design the cake I thought it would be super fun to make the inside colors of the cake match the theme too. I decided to make a Neapolitan cake. Chocolate, vanilla & strawberry, layered with (what else?) vanilla-bean Swiss butter cream.
I had never made a 3-tiered cake before, and you know me, I always like to try something new. I thought what better time to learn!! Thankfully for me, (and everyone at the party) everything ended up turning out great!
I made the whole thing in one day too. It was a long... 13 hr day, but I still think it's pretty remarkable that I was able to accomplish a 3-tiered cake in one day (all by myself-btw) and I think that's also saying something about how far I've come in the last year! I am so looking forward to another few years from now when I have a lot more experience making cake and Gracie is a little older-so I can start teaching her how to bake and decorate cake!
The strawberry cake was my favorite part of this whole thing. I had never made a strawberry cake before so I was very excited to try it out.
When I researched recipes I was quite disappointed to find a boat-load that called for cake mixes and strawberry flavored gelatin mix. And I didn't want any part of that.
So I took my basic white cake recipe that always turns out fluffy and moist (same recipe I used for the vanilla portion of this cake) and added some pureed strawberries to the batter.
Let me just tell you-while this thing was baking my mouth was watering, big time! It smelled so amazing in my house. Like warm biscuits with fresh strawberry preserves or something.
Strawberry cake baking inside my oven instantly became my new favorite smell! I was nervous about the way it would taste though (even though the smell was so intense) seeing how I just added an extra ingredient into my already fantastic white cake batter.
But the taste was just as amazing as the smell! Um... can I just say; HEAVEN! Seriously!
So needless to say adding pureed strawberries to an already fantastic cake batter, um yeah.... probably one of the best decisions I've ever made!
So now that I've made you hungry-here are some pictures of the little peanut's 1st Birthday bash-that, um probably won't help in warding off that hunger-fest, sorry.
I bought some special cake wires and some crystals at the craft store and put them together and stuck 'em in the top tier of the cake.
Gracie & Mom.
Gracie's Grandpa (Portia's Dad) made a cute collage of pictures from the last year to display at the party. It looked really nice next to the (giant) cake.
Dad, Mom & Gracie
Gracie's 91 year-old great-great Grandfather (aka-my great Grandfather, aka the guy I made the Navy Ship cake for)
Gracie & Mom checking out a birthday card.
Getting into it! Ripping some presents open.
Reading with Dad, I think Gracie will be a great reader-she's already shown a huge interest in books and loves being read to!
Ya-I'm one!
The top tier (that was just vanilla) Gracie's "smash" cake was covered in fondant; Gracie wasn't too sure about it I think because she couldn't really dig into it. So Mom peeled it off and then Gracie went to town getting into the frosting.
Nom, nom, nom.....
Neapolitan Cake. Yummy!
Gracie's "smash" cake on it's way to the trash.
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