This past weekend we had my baby dolls birthday party.  It promised to be a day full of a lot of kids and the threat of rain.  I had spent the week planning all of the things that I needed to get done so that I would not feel overwhelmed.  In addition to the party on Saturday, there was a school field trip on Monday that I had volunteered for and a choir concert on Thursday; but I’m supermom so it was no problem. 

Here’s a quick background…a few years ago I paid (handsomely) for an awesome cake for Kristians birthday and I loved the convenience that came along with it.  I mean, you order a cake, you pick it – no stress – it was great.  Now I can make a mean cake and my daughter loves them, so as much as she liked how awesome the ordered cake looked, she now prefers me to make her cakes.  This year in January, Kristian informed me that she wanted a Strawberry/Chocolate Marble cake.  I started experimenting with the process months ago and perfected it a few months back..Yeah! 🙂

Thursday after the concert I started making the cakes.  I used my 14″ pan because we had sent out invitations to 20 kids and their parents, plus my family, godmother, and family friends – I needed a lot of cake.  The process of marbling the batters is intensive.  I make the batters then alternately spoon 3-4 tbsp of each batter at a time.  Here is what the batter looks like before baking.

The finished baked cake ends up looking like this.

I made three layers and filled with strawberry jam to keep and dirty iced it on Friday evening.

My babydoll chose the color scheme of pink and purple zebra print with polka dots and I decided the best way to do this was to use fondant.  I decided to color the white fondant to the colors that I needed.  I got up at 5am on the morning of the party to complete the decorating.  I got a small bucket of white fondant

and keeping my hands lubricated with Crisco, added a few drops of food color to the fondant and kneaded until I reached the color I desired.

I then had to roll out the fondant.  I used to have this handy-dandy plastic sheet that had marks indicating where to stop for certain size cakes.  Well this one time at band camp…no I’m joking. 🙂  One time when Stan was cleaning, he threw it away. 😦  After trying to roll out the fondant on the countertop and having it tear up a couple of times I REALLY needed to find a better way.  Desperation is the author of invention they say and I was desperate, luckily the light bulb came on – PLASTIC WRAP!  I put down three strips of plastic wrap to make a large area and began rolling it out.  OMG it was awesome!

When I got it rolled out to what I thought was a good size I was able to lift up the fondant with the plastic wrap and transfer onto the cake without a hitch.  Plastic wrap guys…use it!  I got the pink base on and then rolled out a thin layer of the purple fondant and cut it into various size strips.  I placed them on along the sides of the cake in a random pattern to make up the zebra pattern.  I then covered the top with polka dots.  The circle with Kristians name was made the night before so that it would have a chance to set.   Here is the finished cake.

I also made a smaller cake for a Grief and Loss class (my awesome mother, the life coach, was the main facilitator).

The party was a great success! 🙂  The bounce house arrived hours early which was a great thing because the kids had a chance to bounce a lot longer than expected (the neighborhood kids had a blast before, during and after the party).  It did start to rain, but it was right around the time that I wanted to get them in to eat, so mother nature helped me get everyone in the house.  My babydoll wanted to have some science “stuff” at her party this year because she really loves science (she wants to be a “science cop”, sounds like CSI to me); so I asked a coworker to come and play “Bill Nye Science Guy”.  The kids loved his experiments – Kristian came to me after the first experiment and asked if she could keep them – they were all done using common household items. 

 When it was all said and done, my babydoll had what she called it “the best party ever” and we didn’t break the bank doing it.  It was a great day.  Have you thrown any great parties lately.