Sophie is One!

You might remember the baby shower cake I made for Sophie last year. (If not, click here.) Well, now Sophie is 1 and celebrating her birthday in grand sailor fashion.  The color scheme was pink, navy blue, and white, and there were lots to do!

First, I made marshmallow pops. Ahead of time, I took mint lifesaver candy and painted them with edible ink to resemble life preservers. Then I took marshmallows and stuck them into one end of a decorative straw. I dipped half the marshmallow lot into melted pink chocolate, and the other half of the lot into melted navy blue chocolate (this was white chocolate wafers melted down using the double boiler method, and then added food coloring afterwards). Then I added sprinkles and the lifesaver candy on top before the chocolate coating could fully dry.
I like how these turned out and would opt to do these again in the future!

Second, I made vanilla cupcakes topped with a pink buttercream swirl and white sprinkles. They turned out more coral than pink but with the cupcake wrapper and sprinkles, it still looked good.

 

 

Third, and possibly most difficult of all, I had to do a cake! I was excited about this one though, because I knew ahead of time what I was going to do. Sophie's mom had shown me a picture ahead of time of what she wanted the cake to look like. I made the bottom tier (8" round) vanilla , and the top tier (6" round) chocolate. I covered them both in pink fondant .. it was difficult this time as the fondant was heavy and started to rip as soon as I put it on the cake.

While decorating, outside the weather was turning bad (it would turn out to be the weekend of freezing rain, city-wide power outages, and lots of downed trees!). However, with the ripping fondant and softening buttercream on the cake, I had to go out to the store and get more fondant. So yes I drove in freezing rain - lesson learned: stock up on fondant!! :p

So back to the cake - I was able to finally get the cakes covered and stacked. I decorated the bottom tier with vertical stripes of white fondant. Then I took two strips of white fondant, rolled them out into long worm-like strings, and then carefully intertwined them making sure they didn't tear. This makes the rope look. I draped these at the bottom of each tier. I cut out a piece of fondant, and with navy blue edible ink, I painted on the number "1" and stuck this to the front of the cake.

Ahead of time, I had created a navy blue anchor out of gumpaste. This had since dried and hardened so I placed it at the bottom of the cake, resting along the ropes. I had also made parts of the sailboat and now put them together on the top tier.  The mast of the sailboat is actually a thin popsicle stick (from the craft store) used for support, and painted in edible navy blue ink. The sailboat was stuck onto the cake using buttercream icing.


Update:
Sophie's mom has a knack for decorating and was featured in a blog (along with my cake)!
http://thesweetpeachpaperie.com/sweet-customers-sophie-is-one/