birthday baby

A few weeks ago, Palmer celebrated his very first birthday! We had a party with family, ate tacos, and watched Palmer open all his cool presents. He wasn't that into eating the cake his mother slaved away on, but that's ok :) If you are wondering how I came up with the design (which I did not)- check out Wilton's website! They have a HUGE variety of shaped cake pans that come with a picture to guide you in decorating them. There is a list of icing colors on the paper so you know which food coloring to use. My mom always did cakes like this for us when we were little, so I thought I would pass on the love!

This cake was definitely a labor of love as it was mixed and baked TWICE. The first round I used a complex homemade chocolate cake recipe with special cocoa and everything. Apparently the recipe I used was slightly larger than a boxed cake mix, because the cake bubbled completely out of the dino pan and into the bottom of my oven! I thought I could save it by scraping the batter even with the pan and continuing to bake it, but it crumbled to pieces when I took it out of the pan later. Thank goodness my mom came over that afternoon to help. She scraped burned cake lava out of the oven while I washed the pan and made a whole new cake (this time, out of a box). At least I still did the buttercream myself!

Michaels and Hobby Lobby sell Wilton cake decorating supplies if you want to give it a shot! There are bags, tips, couplers, gels, drops, and a bazillion other accessories perfect for building a big collection :) Here is big boy Palmer riding on his new toy from Uncle Nathan. . .