Frustration... Panic... Semi-Success?

My good friend Keegan has a beautiful baby girl, Charlotte, who celebrated her first birthday today!  We are going over tomorrow for a little birthday bash and I am so honored to have made Charlotte her face smashing cake.  :)  However... this was quite an interesting adventure.  Keegan requested a giant cupcake -- which I have never made... and I decided Charlotte probably wouldn't enjoy smashing her face in fondant so I opted to pipe the whole cupcake in buttercream frosting.  This kid is going to be on a sugar high tomorrow -- since the cupcake is covered in a double batch of frosting (aka 8 cups of powdered sugar.... YIKES!)

Well, the baking was pretty easy.  I had some great tips from Cake Central friends so there were no problems there.  I decided to chop off part of the top of the cake to make it flatter though... and that just created problems.  THANK GOODNESS for my wonderful husband Kyle, who helped me through the panic and frustration and used his "spacial thinking" to figure out to make my screw up work.  (I, on the other hand, lack spacial "concept" as Kyle would call it -- I always was more of a square peg, round hole kind of kid.)

After the initial mishap, I decided to do my crumb coat, and then pipe.  The bottom looked OK, the top looked horrible.  So, I smoothed out the top, which made it look better.  Then, I did a second layer on the bottom to make it look a little more even.  THEN, I decided to add some fun "ruffles" to try to hide all the major boo-boos.  This by no means came out perfect, but I'm "satisfied" with the end result.  The little pom-pom on the top and the fondant daisies added a nice touch, I thought.

Here are some photos:

I again have to say what a saint my husband is... I would not get through these cakes without his assistance, patience, and inspiration!

Happy First Birthday, Charlotte!
XO,
Aly