A Season of First Birthdays

This past October my daughter turned a year old. Shortly after her first birthday were a stream of first birthdays for all of her baby friends. I had the great pleasure of making cupcakes and smash cakes for all the little babies. Here's a quick pic of my baby girl at her tea party birthday. I did vanilla cupcakes with strawberry mousse frosting and banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Watching her eat cake wasn't as exciting as it is for most parents because she has reaped the benefits of having a mother for a baker at much too early age:)

       

In November we celebrated the birthday of Hawea's dear friend Finley whose mama writes the blog Tiny Green Elephants. This cake was a treat to make because it contained no processed sugar. I was a little worried at first as I had never made a sugar-free cake but I was able to find a delicious recipe that contained apples, cinnamon, and unsweetened apple juice. What I now realize is that this delicious cake could also be made for diabetics too! 

I can proudly admit that this may have been one of the happiest customers I've had to date.

    

Then in December we celebrated two birthdays. In the beginning of the month was dear little Adelyn's birthday. We went with vanilla cupcakes and the sprinkles recipe for strawberry frosting. The cupcakes were topped with fresh strawberry slices and the birthday girl's cupcake had a white ribbon made of gumpaste.

Little Adelyn also dug right in and loved her very first taste at the sweet life.

 In late December we flew to the midwest for Christmas and for our 4th niece's first birthday. I was so excited to create these cupcakes and smash cake inspired by one of my favorite children's author's Eric Carle. For those of you who have been out of the children's book loop lately, he's authored The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See, to name a few. The smash cake and cupcakes were vanilla injected with raspberry sauce, topped with two kinds of raspberry frosting-one a light whipping and the other a traditional frosting. The butterfly on the smash cake was made from gumpaste as well as the butterfly and caterpillar cupcake toppers.