50th Birthday Cake

Last Saturday Tren and I hosted his mom's 50th Birthday party. I was in charge of the cake. I was trying to come up with something awesome (of course) to do and did some googling on over-the-hill type cakes. We decided I'd better do something not so over the hill-y. Tren's mom LOVES sheep/lambs, so I googled "sheep birthday cakes". I got some great ideas and then thought about cupcakes. So I googled "sheep cupcakes". AHHHHAH! Love this idea. Tren and I talked and we decided I'd make little lamb cupcakes and a big red barn cake. Earlier in the week I made my little bite-sized twinkie cupcakes for my lambs. Then I also made a few 9 inch red velvet cakes for my barn. I made 6 of them, and had a few altercations getting 2 of them out of the pan, so I really only ended up with 4 good solid squares and some chunks. Friday night after work I had to get started on these things. I was not feeling creative AT ALL. I needed a pal to help me get in the groove on this. I have never made a birthday cake alone. This was becoming a problem and I was about to just say screw it and only have the twinkies. I decorated one little sheep the way I had planned to, but it was hideous. Then Tren came to my rescue and we came up with this sweet little creature:

Do you love it? I do! First the twinkie was dipped into the frosting. Then using a jelly belly that had been cut in half we put on the ears, and then another half for the nose. Then blue frosting for the eyes. Then he was rolled in coconut. Done! Well,.... 49 more and I was done...

Do you see the one in the top left corner? That was the first one I made and wanted to smush it and quit. It looks like a mouse =ugly

I had Tren cut me a big piece of wood to hold all this stuff on. I knew cardboard wouldn't work. I covered it in foil and then made some green frosting. At this point, Belle is wanting to be very involved, so after spreading my green grass, I let her do some green sprinkles. Then we added a bit of sheep droppings. This was funny.

Then I started to build the barn. Belle was talking and talking and talking. "why are you doing that?" "what is that for?" "I want to help." "I need to do some of it." -holy smokes she talks alot!- So I tell her that she can't really do any hands-on helping, but she can tell me how good it is looking and that I'm doing a great job. I am not exaggerating a bit when I say this, but she told me I was doing a great job or it looked great every 30 seconds. After about 2 minutes of this I thought she was being sincere, but then I looked and noticed she wasn't even looking at what I was doing anymore. Lovely. I got the barn up and realized I didn't save any of my frosting to do the white trim on the barn. So, I waited for Tren to get home to go get me a tub of frosting. I had used all my powdered sugar for the red. Oops..

Then I added the white trim, a "K" for Kim and the fence. I had also made a bail of straw. I was very happy with it and even though the barn looked a bit frumpy, I loved it. It was perfect and I couldn't wait until the next day to add my baby lambs.

Finally it was about 11:30 on Saturday and time to put on the flock!

The cake turned out just as I had imagined it! It was a hit and very delicious, too. This was by far my most favorite cake to make.

Happy 50th Kim!