Zaylee's Birthday Cake, Fit for a Princess!

Wow, it's been a while since I posted here. We spent a week visiting family in Idaho, and then I just haven't gotten around to really doing anything special for the food blog. But I'm back, and hoping to get things going again.

While we were in Idaho, Zaylee had her 4th birthday. We had a fun family get-together to celebrate, complete with a fun cake!


This was such an easy cake to decorate, and everyone enjoyed it. I started with a simple yellow cake recipe, making 1 1/2 of the recipe. I made one 9x13 layer, and one 8x8 layer. While those cooled, I made a double batch of one of my favorite frosting recipes of all time. This stuff is so yummy!!!

Cream Cheese and Cool Whip Frosting
1 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese
1 8-oz. carton frozen whipped topping
1/3 cup sugar (granulated)
1 tsp. vanilla

Beat cream cheese until softened. Beat in remaining ingredients until combined and creamy. Add a few drops of food coloring if desired.

I would have done all the frosting pink (Zaylee is such a girly girl), but I have a nephew who is sensitive to red dye, so we needed to have at least part of the cake with no red or pink at all. I frosted the 9x13 with white frosting, then dyed the rest pink. I stacked the 8x8 right in the center of the larger cake, and frosted it with the pink frosting.

Then came the fun part. We had paid a visit to the bulk section at WinCo and picked out lots of fun candies - lots of pink, but again making sure to get some things with no red dye. We placed four ice cream cones on the corners of the top layer to act as turrets, then frosted them and added pink jelly beans around the sides. Then we just went crazy with the candies! Lots of pink on the top layer, and all sorts of other candies on the bottom. We used chocolate covered peanuts, yogurt covered peanuts, jelly beans, gumdrops, and those little pastel mint chocolate chip thingies.

Four big red gumdrops sat on top of the ice cream cones to hold the candles, and then we were done!

This really is my favorite way to decorate a cake. I have bags and tips for piping frosting, and am fairly decent at it (or I would be if I practiced...) but I really love to just have a fun concept and then create it with things like candies, cookies, and other fun edibles to make a unique and exciting cake that the kids just love! Here's the other cakes in this style that I've blogged about:

Thomas' First Birthday

Thomas' Second Birthday

Zaylee's Third Birthday


And of course, I can't do a birthday post without a picture the little birthday princess. My family gave her several princess dresses as her birthday gift, and she had such a blast trying them all on, over and over again!