Happy birthday Mini-1

Our darling Mini-1 was born 7 years ago today, and - as is our wont at Becca Bakes - we intended to make a fuss.  She had some specific cake requests though - it had to be vanilla, and have vanilla icing, be green and perhaps also yellow, turquoise, red and pink.  Oh, and she wanted one in a number 7 shape and one round, and some mini-Smarties on the shaped cake.  And something to do with Moshi Monsters too please Mum?!  I duly noted all this down, and got my thinking cap on.

Was it to be covered in fondant, or buttercream?  Was I going to make my life easier and mark out the number 7 in the actual Smarties themselves on a cake, or actually try to shape one?  Was I going to layer the cake and thus try to get in some more colours?  Was I going to buy a Moshi Monster cake topper and just pop it on top?  And so on and so forth.  In the end, I decided to go for two differently coloured layers, with red jam in the middle, green buttercream icing all around and cut the cake into a number 7.  I know that you can buy shaped tins, and some places actually hire them out (though no idea where those places are) but I had a book that I received for my last birthday that gave hints on how to bake and cut.

I knew I would need time for the cakes to cool before I could assemble and decorate them, so had to start baking in the afternoon.  Luckily, Mini-1 wasn't too interested to see what I was doing (unlike Mini-2, who loves to help) so she didn't really notice the first yellow or the second green cakes cooling near the oven later on.  Phew!

I know they're not pretty, but keep reading...  Next up, after slicing off the rounded tops to make them flat for layering, was to mix up the buttercream to get it all green.  As you can see, it's also not pretty, but I'm getting there, promise!

Then on to the task of separating out the mini Smarties.  Honestly, the things we do for our kids - they really won't know how much we love them, until they have kids of their own!

And finally to the finished product, ta da!

The little figurine at the bottom of the cake is a Moshi Monster that she likes, called Cali.  I bought it off eBay because none of the images we found for cake toppers were attractive.

Here we see Mini-1 herself with her eyes covered so that I could get the cake onto the plate, place in the figurine and candle, and bring out the cake pops.  The silly girl had pressed too hard when covering her eyes, and couldn't see straight when she first took her hands away.  She absolutely loved the cake and pops though  :)

Here are the cake pops.  As with last time, they're not fabulously round, or even particularly spherical.  But they taste better this time because I used some cream cheese to help mould them, rather than all icing.  And the girls couldn't eat them fast enough, result.