Butterfly Cake

Our sweet, rambunctious, independent Ellia turned 2 last week.  She is full of life, laughs, and plenty of squeals......she loves babies, both real and dolls, she talks in 5-8 word sentences, she calls Corban "Pibben" and until just yesterday, said hiccup as "Hippup".  Irresistibly cute!  Now she says it correctly, which is still cute in her little voice, but it's just not the same.  

Ellia loves butterflies, so it was a no-brainer to make a butterfly cake for her birthday.  I ended up choosing this one from Betty Crocker.com - and made two of them, since each butterfly is made from one 9" cake layer.  I also made some flower cupcakes from another cake mix, because I didn't want to run out of cake!

Instructions:

1 cake mix, baked according to box directions in 2 9" rounds

Buttercream frosting of choice

Assorted candies for decoration - optional

Colored Sugar in desired colors

Fruit roll-ups 

After cake is completely cool, wrap in foil and freeze overnight if possible.  

Remove from freezer when you're ready to decorate and trim the top of the cakes if they're rounded.  

Then cut each circle exactly in half.  Cut out a little triangle out of each straight edge just below the center and use the cake pieces to form the body of the butterfly, as shown below.

  

Frost and decorate as desired, using fruit roll-ups for the antennae (or you could use licorice if you want).

I wanted to make them a little more detailed, but I just didn't have the time.  The lovely thing about butterflies is that really the sky is the limit on how you can decorate them - just be creative!  

And what little girl doesn't love butterflies?  

She really did like her cake, she was just a bit overwhelmed at the group of people staring at her and trying to get a smile out of her.

  

This is her big gift - the mac-daddy of all dolly strollers.  It's awesome.  There's little she loves more than pushing dolls around the house - and we figured we might as well get a nice, sturdy stroller that would last a few years.  This one most definitely will.  She could hardly believe it when Grant brought it out for her.  Her face was priceless.