The Next Great Baker

Good morning! Don't forget to enter my blog candy in the post below if you have not already! Thanks for all the good feedback I'm getting in the comments to help me plan posts!Had to share some photos of my William decorating his first "fondant" cake for his 7th birthday this past weekend at Foodie Kids. He shared his "vision" for his cake with me a few weeks ago, with a both a sketch and description ("I want 3 stacked tiers, 8, 10 and 12 inch, fondant covered, piping, jungle cake with a 3d snake made of modelling chocolate", can you tell who's been watching "Cake Boss"?) Well... THAT was all waaaay beyond my capabilities (or supplies! or budget!!)

Fortunately, Foodie Kids, which I have told you about before on my blog (used to be called Kids Cook) offers a really nice option that he agreed was the perfect compromise: an 8 inch tier in your choice of flavor (already baked by them and fondant covered), and then the ability to use all their supplies and three colors of fondant for cutting, modeling and three different types of candies to add. Although they didn't really have many cutters specifically designed for his jungle theme, we were able to easily improvise with a lot of what they did have (part of a peace sign cutter to make a tree trunk (when flipped upside down, etc. The letter cutters were a big hit!)

He chose Skittles and Nerd ropes for the bottom, (which the woman at the store thought was just the prettiest, cleverest way to ring the cake, especially for a jungle!) We were there for a little over an hour, allowing him to add all his details, draw on the cake with edible ink markers, plus decorate the cardboard cake box, for 21.99, I thought that was a great deal! Yes, I could have made a boxed cake from the grocery store for about 5 bucks, but when you take into account the price of all the candy, fondant (this is super expensive), decorating glitter, which is so gorgeous and sparkly in real life!) etc I thought the cake and experience was a steal! His focus in this next photo is what Buddy would call, "being in the zone"!He loved having it on the spinning turntable, too "just like Buddy's" (although he did almost spin it off at few times, getting a little overexcited, that was nerve wracking!) Although at first it looked a little small compared to the layer cakes we normally have, it was just the perfect size for our family birthday at home (big party was last weekend) plus having a couple slices left over for after school snack the next day. (Kind of nice actually not to have tons of cake hanging around the next couple of days, you know?) :)

We would definitely go back and do that again for a special occasion! (I hear they are franchising so you might have one in your area soon!) Highly recommended!

So much to catch you up on! (Will have to see if I can upload video from our video camera of me doing back handsprings at his Jumpoline party!!) Thanks for visiting today! :)