A few weeks back Gracie was trying to decide what she was going to do for her birthday party. We had thrown a few ideas around when I came across a place locally that has a fondant cake decorating party. As soon as Gracie heard about it she knew that was what she wanted to do for her party. {Gracie LOVES cake shows. She watches all the ones that are on TV. We record them on the DVR for her too so she can watch them over and over again. She just loves them. She has started using the terminology and pronunciation that they use on the shows too. For instance, she calls the fondant that they use to cover the cakes “FondONt” instead of saying “fondENt” like the rest of us.} When I called to find out about the party they told be that we could only have 14 guests. Gracie has more kids than that in her class alone, not counting family and friends. I knew not everyone would come to the party, but since they didn’t want to give me enough invitations to cover her class {in fear that too many would come} we had to make the tough decision to have her party some place else. She was bummed, but then Nana had an awesome idea! Nana makes the girls birthday cakes every year and she offered to bring all her stuff to our house so Gracie could make and decorate her own cake. Gracie was beyond excited!!! She and Nana have been talking for a few weeks now about the design, colors, etc., so Nana & Paw Paw packed up their car with all the necessary cake making/decorating stuff needed {that I don’t have any of} and drove up on Gracie’s birthday.
On the way to lunch Gracie decided to sketch out her cake {just like they do on the cakes shows} so they would both have and idea of what she wanted. Here was the sketch:
After we got home for Lunch Gracie and Nana got to work! Nana brought the cakes already baked and crumb coated. So the first thing to do was to ice the bottom layer.
After the bottom layer was iced it was time for the fondant {sorry…fondONt}. Gracie was so excited to finally work with this “fondant stuff” that the people on TV used.
Gracie loved working with the fondant! She decide to just ice the top layer in colored icing so that she could work with {eat} the icing more. After they got the top layer iced it was time to stack the cakes.
Now that the cake was all stacked we could get started on all the decorations! Gracie and Nana started with the fondant roses that Gracie wanted on the top of the cake.
Nana & I rolled our the fondant for all of the side decorations and Gracie cut them out and placed them on the cake. We had to help her here and there because she had a bit of a hard time with the iced layer…it takes a little bit more of a steady hand to place the fondant on the delicate frosting {those that know me are laughing right now as I described my hand as “steady”…I shake all the time, ha}.
The last part of the cake decorating was to add white frosting dots around each layer. Gracie has changed her design concept over the last few weeks but the white dots have been a consistent detail and even make it on her sketch.
After 3 hours and weeks of designing Gracie and Nana finished her birthday cake!
It turned out so great! Gracie absolutely LOVED it was so excited to take it to her birthday party! Nana loves to make memories and I know that this will be one that Gracie will NEVER forget! Thank you Nana!!!
Since Gracie and Nana had such a great time with their cake project I thought I would take a walk down memory lane and look back at of all Gracie’s “Nana Cakes” from birthdays past.
Thank you Nana for all of the beautiful cakes you have made for Gracie! I also want to tell Paw Paw thank you for getting the cakes here all the way from Austin safely each year! We are looking forward to seeing what cake comes next!
