Elephant Cake

Birthday season is fast approaching in our house.....Annika turns 3 in September, Corban and Marissa turn 7 and 5 in October, and Ellia will turn 1 in November.

Since I love to make birthday cakes designed with each child's current interests in mind, the wheels are turning fast and furious as I plan for the coming celebrations.

In honor of that, I thought I'd feature a few more of the cakes I have made over the years, most before my blogging days.

This Elephant Cake is the first decorated one I ever made, and it was for Corban's 2nd birthday. I was just a week away from delivering Marissa at the time!

I got the recipe and design from an older issue of Taste of Home.....I can't remember which one, but it must have been from 2002 sometime. I didn't take pictures of the process.....but basically I made two 13 x 9" cakes (from mixes).

One cake was the body, the other cake was used to carve the ear, trunk, feet, and tail. Then I made a huge batch of buttercream frosting, tinted mostly a bluish gray, with a tiny section black and a tiny section left white.

I gave a light coat of frosting to the whole thing and then just piped stars over the rest of it. Since it was my first time and I really had no idea what I was doing, I think it took me like 3-4 hours. My hand was so exhausted!

I was using the Pampered Chef tool for piping, which is okay, but now I really prefer using Wilton bags and tips.

Alongside, I made peanut butter cookies shaped like peanuts......cute extra touch. I did make sure that none of the guests had peanut allergies before making them!

Corban was THRILLED with his cake....and I was very pleased at how well it turned out.