Walking in a Winter Wonderland

December babies have the tough task of competing for birthday attention with all the other winter holidays. Being a Novmeber baby myself, I only have thanksgiving to worry about, so it's not as difficult. My mother decided that celebrating her birthday in December just was not enough, so my parents added their anniversary to the mix as well! Now she has basically a non stop party from the 17th (anniversary) to the 19th (birthday) and starts up again a few days later for Christmas!

Now, if you have every hosted or attended a child's first birthday, you know that the party is really just for the mom. Kids are so young at that point that the only thing that concerns them is getting cake! That, my cakey friends, is where I come in.

My very good friend Megan, was blessed with a baby girl last year, who was also doomed to a December birthday. She, however, was lucky enough to make her debut in early December. So, we celebrated miss Paige's first birthday on December 1st.

Megan and I have been friends since high school. We were in the band colorguard and served as co-captains together our senior year. Meg was the maid of honor at my wedding and the godmother to my son. Needless to say, with a background like that, of course I would hook her up with an awesome cake for her own daughter's first birthday!

Meg had choosen a Winter 'One'derland theme for Paige. She sent me a copy of the invites and decorations she planned to use and we tossed around a few ideas. We finally settled on a small 2 tiered vanilla cake, with lemon buttercream (Paige is fond of lemon, she chomps on those things like cookies!). The penguins were all hand molded from my fondant (yes, I make my own fondant, and it tastes vastly better than any pre-made stuff!) I had grand visions of a penguin playground when I started, but as the tiers started coming together, I scaled down my plans to include just 3 penguins.

I still wanted to incorporate a penguin playground, so I carved out the bottom tier of the cake into the shape of a slide, for the penguins of course! There is a mischievious little penguin on the top tier, preparing for a snowball fight. And the one with the pink bow matches the party invitations. For the finishing touches, I added icicle to the cake borders and piped out some royal icing snowflakes and dusted them with sparkling sugar sprinkles, to add some sparkle.



Cake top with the birthday girl, Paige, in the background



Of course, no first birthday is complete without a smash cake for the baby! Sticking to our winter theme, I made a tiny igloo cake, dusted with sugar sprinkles for Paige to enjoy all to herself.