A Few Birthday Cakes

Here are a few of my favorite cakes I've made over the last year and a half. The first is Jo's 5th birthday cake. Her birthday is always around Thanksgiving, so it's tricky to throw her a birthday party. For her 5th birthday, we tacked her celebration onto Thanksgiving, so she got two "birthday parties", one with each side of the family. I used my 6" cake pans (that I purchased for Pete and Chloe's wedding cake) and made two small 2-layer cakes.

My family always gets my decorating experiments. I kind of like this one!

Micah's 3rd birthday cake was a construction cake, because this boy loves all things "twucks".

This was a very different style for me to try, but I had fun with it!

Photo credit to my friend Jenny

In 2021, my sister had her golden birthday - she turned 23 on the 23rd! I made her a golden chocolate cake!

I tried my first ever drip cake, which was a bit less successful than I was hoping for. To get a nice gold drip, you can either drip white chocolate ganache and then paint it (which sounded like waaaaay too much work) or make a gold drip out of luster dust and vodka (the alcohol evaporates off). I chose the luster dust/vodka method, but my mixture was too liquidy, so it dripped much faster than expected.

I made the number cake toppers out of a gold glitter foam sheet from Hobby Lobby and some toothpicks.

I used lots of gluten-free chocolate candies, some of which I cut and/or painted with more luster dust. I purchased several kinds of gold sprinkles as well, and made chocolate bark with gold accents to decorate the back of the cake. (Unfortunately, I either used too much chocolate bark, or gluten-free cake isn't as sturdy as regular cake - or both? - and the cake started to fall apart on the party day. Thankfully, broken cake still tastes good!)

Love and Sprinkles,

Leah Joy