Another birthday cake creation

Not to be outdone by her brother, for Alex's second birthday this past weekend, I created an Elmo birthday cake.

Because I did a Mickey cake last year for Austin's third birthday, I didn't have the same fear of screwing up. In other words, I knew I could do it. And, since Alex is completely in love with Elmo right now, I knew she'd love it -- no matter how great or poor it looked.

I rented the pan from Bulk Barn again and baked it on Thursday night. Then, around 7:30 Friday night, I got to work making and dying icing. This, in my opinion is the longest and most tedious part. Yes, the actual icing of the cake takes a long time -- but that, in some weird way, is fun. Stirring and adding dye and stirring and adding more dye and stirring and adding yet more dye to get the right colour is long and tedious. I think I used way too much red dye to get the right shade of red -- but what the heck, Elmo is very red after all. And besides, red icing doesn't stain your teeth quite as badly as Mickey Mouse ears black does.

It was about 9 p.m. when I started icing the cake. Oh how times have changed -- because I spent the next two and a half hours of my Friday night hanging out with Elmo. Although, that time did include drinking half a bottle a wine, so it was time well spent.

In the end, I think the cake looked great -- and yet again, I can't believe I pulled off doing something like that.

And Alex loved it. She saw it for the first time just as we were leaving for her party and she went nuts. And for the next few hours, while playing at the party, she would periodically go into the kitchen area, look at the cake and them come to me and say 'eat Elmo cake?'.

Needless to say, when it was time to 'eat Elmo cake' she was one happy girl. And really, that's all that mattered.