Coolest 1st Winter Baby Birthday Cake

by Gussie Schmitz
(Union, MO USA)

My daughter was born in January, so I wanted a theme for her first birthday that signified winter. I finally settled on penguins. After much thought I came up with the idea to do an iceberg with an igloo and the water’s edge.Not an easy task! So here’s how I did it!

I started for winter baby birthday cake with a half sheet cake. I chose to do half yellow and half chocolate. First I used a small box from the cake mix to prop up one end of the pan. Then I poured in the yellow batter. Now here’s the tricky part. Slowly, I poured in the chocolate with one hand and gently and gradually lowered the cake pan as I poured.It turned out perfect! After baking it, I let it cool until it was just cool enough to touch and the edges were pulling away from the pan and I turned it out to cool the rest of the way. Next,I leveled the bottom of the cake with a long bladed knife and flipped it onto my covered cake board.If your cake board is not covered or waxed, it will absorb the oil from the cake and frosting and look unattractive.

Next, I used a glass bowl from The Pampered Chef to make a half sphere cake. This would be the igloo. Using the same cooling and trimming process as before, I turned it onto a small round board that was just the size of the igloo. This would provide support so that it wouldn’t fall into the bigger cake.

I chose to apply the white icing to the big cake with large swipes of the spatula. This way it would look like snow drifts. I used a blue, glitter piping gel for the water and applied it the same way, this way it would look like waves in the water. Then I randomly piped white icing along the edge of the water with tip #21 to look like an icy shoreline.After the big cake was done, I rolled out white fondant to cover the igloo. After much hard labor (rolling fondant is not easy for me) the igloo was covered and I used a scoring tool to press lines into the igloo to look like ice blocks.

All that was left was to place the little water squirter penguins and I was finished! I got rave reviews my winter baby birthday cake and was very happy with my results!