Jakey is 3!

Yesterday was Jake's 3rd birthday!  I can't believe that 3 years have already passed, and it seems like those years have passed in the blink of an eye.  (All parents say this, don't they?)  We had an extra special family fun day at the Boston Children's Museum yesterday to celebrate, followed by a barbecue with my parents, and, of course, cake!  I asked Jake what kind of cake he would like and he surprised me by answering "pal-lanets" - or planets :)  So, I did a quick search on coolest-birthday-cakes.com and got some inspiration.  Here is what we came up with:

 

 

I started with two 9" round yellow cakes and frosted that in the blue buttercream (I like Wilton's buttercream recipe).  I wanted to show the entire solar system, including Pluto even though it was demoted to a dwarf planet.  Pluto is Jake's favorite!  I made the sun and planets out of rice crispy treats.  Marshmellow fondant (as from Wilton's recipe) is used to cover the rice crispy planets and also for the star and moon cutouts.  I looked up pictures of all the planets so that I had a general idea of the fondant colors I needed, but I mostly just winged it!  Here are some different angles and close-ups:

Saturn, Jupiter and small Mars

Uranus (green with rings - did you know it had rings too?)

Venus (red on the stick), Pluto (small black and white), Neptune (blue, also with rings)

Close up of Earth!

 

If I were to make this cake again, I would either make the cakes larger or make the planets and sun smaller.  I assembled the cake the day before and had most of the planets attached, most of them hovering above the cake, using wooden skewers.  When I checked the cake later in the day, Neptune and Uranus had completely fallen off the cake tearing off some of the cake with them!  And, the sun was so heavy that it had made a big crack down the middle of the cake!  Ooops!  It was actually pretty funny to see.  I was able to fix it the next day with some extra frosting, but the back side of the cake was pretty messy.  The frosting and the fondant were both super easy to make.  I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to knead in the coloring into the fondant.

 

And, of course, both boys loved the taste of everything!  Here is proof:

 



Jakey eating Pluto

Happy Birthday!