The Wiggles cake |

Continuing to add Henri’s backdated birthday cakes as we count down to this year’s party, here’s the cake I made for his 2nd birthday, which had a The Wiggles theme.

I’ve posted about the party before, but sorta glossed over the cake, so here are some more details.

The first thing I did was to cut out a LOT of man-shaped cookies. Each invitee was going to receive their own set of Wiggles characters in their lootbags, and I needed to have extra for the cake, and in case of breakage. Once the cookies had baked and cooled I tinted up some homemade royal icing and got to work.

A little while later I had these guys. (The black icing marker details were added a few days later, to make sure the icing had dried enough).

Once thoroughly dry, the cookies were packaged up and attached to assorted coloring books to be given out after the party.

Then I was on to the cake. I had rented a Wilton 3D Cruiser cake pan from our local cake supply store. I baked the car-shaped cake out of chocolate cake mix, and for the base I baked a 9 x 13 sheet cake out of vanilla cake mix, as I wasn’t sure the car cake pan itself wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone. It took 1.75 boxes of cake mix, but it’s an odd shape, so I couldn’t guarantee it would be cut in a way that would give enough slices. It took me about 3-4 hours to make my own buttercream icing, tint the colors I needed, crumb-coat and then decorate the cake.

The cake as baked wasn’t a convertible, so I used a knife and carefully cut it into a more appropriate shape for what I was trying to duplicate.

I remember being panicked that I wouldn’t be able to ice the cake smoothly, which is why I’d ended up filling it all in with a star-tip in my piping bag.

I copied the Big Red Car’s colors off a DVD case we had at home, and used leftover of the 4 main icing colors to cover the sides of the base cake.

The logo and the front windshield were the only two spots I dared attempt to smooth over. After the basic shape was down, I piped the letters with a narrow round icing tip.

I waited until right before serving to add the 4 cookies I’d reserved, as I was afraid they would absorb moisture from the cake and crumble or break at the attachment points. So I brought them to the party in a flat tupperware and stuck them in at dessert time.

I let Murray have a chance to drive. 🙂

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Henri’s other birthday treats

Ok! I’m here with time to post, and post I shall! 🙂

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When for most people things start to slow down after the holiday rush, for me things were only getting started. As I mentioned last post, I spent the first week of the year making the food for the party. Over 100 gingerbread man-shaped cookies were baked on Tues, iced on Wed and had faces hand-drawn on Thurs.

On Friday the 7th I rented a 3D Cruiser cake pan from our local cake supply store and baked the car-shaped cake out of chocolate cake mix, and a 9 x 13 sheet cake out of vanilla cake mix. I was afraid the car cake pan itself wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone. It took 1.75 boxes of cake mix, but it’s an odd shape, so I couldn’t guarantee it would be cut in a way that would give enough slices.

Saturday the 8th was the actual big day- Henri’s 2nd birthday!

I can’t believe he’s 2 already! He’s such a big boy, and I mean that quite literally. Not only has the word explosion hit full force (over 100 words, 15+ songs and 8-word-+ sentances), but he is also a BIG boy- 3 feet tall and 32 lbs 12 oz…the same weight and maybe an inch shorter than his almost 4-year-old brother! He’s been 95th percentile for height and 75-90th for weight since he was 3 months old.

Henri is my happy, stubborn, silly little monkey. He’s his brother’s best friend, and the perfect last piece to complete our family. Every day he makes me so happy to be his mom, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s turned into a Mommy’s Boy. 🙂 Yannick’s not used to having one of our kids turn to me before him, but hey- at least this way we’ve each “got one” LOL.

Once the kids went to bed Saturday night I got down to business. It took me about 3-4 hours to make my own buttercream icing, tint the colors I needed, crumb-coat and then decorate the cake. I’m never happy with the cakes I make while they’re in progress, but so far I’ve been pretty pleased with the final outcome, and while Henri’s still a little young, Jakob has been wowed. (In fact, 2 days after his last birthday party he told me that his cake was a blue dinosaur, which it was, and then requested a red Lightning McQueen cake for his next birthday…a request he has made approximately 856,355,674,301 times since then).

Sunday morning was Henri’s birthday party with all his friends. The party was Wiggles-themed, from the invites that had a photo of all the Wiggles characters with Henri’s head superimposed on Henry the Octopus, to the 4 yellow, red, blue and purple-shirted cookie men in the lootbags, all the way down to the cake which you’ll see in a minute. My favorite touch was a special appearance by the “Wiggles” themselves! I had to promise no YouTube appearance, but as a little treat for Henri my dad, one of my brothers, my cousin and Yannick dressed up in yellow, blue, red and purple tshirts and did a lip-synch to one of Henri’s favorite Wiggles songs- Fruit Salad. My brother, who wore the red shirt like Murray, even brought his guitar for some “authenticity”. 🙂 My other brother was supposed to do it, but he went to France and missed the party, so my dad was a very gracious Zaida and stepped in to wear the purple shirt.

I was too busy to pull out my camera, but my friend Avi took some gorgeous photos for us:

Here’s Jakob!

The birthday boy and Daddy.

The cake!

The cake was completed around midnight Saturday night, but just before serving (Sunday, 11:15am) I tucked in the 4 Wiggles cookies that I’d reserved.

The birthday boy and Mommy!

I’ll leave you with my favorite shot from all of Avi’s pictures. I love everything about it- and every time I see it, it makes me smile.

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The Wiggles cake

henri’s 2nd birthday

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