A big first birthday celebration + keeping the work colleagues happy

Nat asked me a couple of weeks ago if I'd be able to make her daughter's first birthday cake. Her invitation, designed by my gorgeous bride Ivy, had owls on it so we thought it was only natural to incorporate these into the cake design.

Nat had a big crowd coming to the party so we opted for a two tiered cake iced with vanilla buttercream and decorated with owls, flowers, leaves and branches.

The bottom tier was dark chocolate mud and the top tier was lemon and coconut. This was a huge cake - to make the tall bottom tier it took 4 mud cake batters, divided into two cake tins. The top tier took 1 1/2 batters split between two tiers. So all in all, there were 5 1/2 cakes within this cake! It was HEAVY.

Yes, I may or may not dowel my cakes with straws. It works well. They hold nicely because of their cylinder shape - the cake goes up through the straw so the straws don't move at all. Handy.

So here's the finished product!

We had a 'sugar and spice' themed day at work last week and of course I was on 'sweet' duty. I was short on time so I whipped up these cupcakes at the same time as baking the cakes for Nat's design. That's some skillful baking right there!

These were vanilla bean cupcakes topped with spearmint buttercream, pearl cachous and edible glitter. Note to self: go easy on the spearmint essence. One colleague kept saying how 'minty fresh' her breath was. No complaints from anyone though - they went down a treat. In fact, a couple of those who aren't familiar with my love of baking kept asking where I 'bought' them. I tried my best to stifle my laughter, I really did ;)