Girls' 4th Cupcake Birthday Cake!

Posted by Ethne~

Ok, this will probably be the last of the 4^th birthday posts, but I couldn’t finish up without giving you the breakdown of the girls’ giant cupcake birthday cake.

My co-worker was going to loan me her giant cupcake mold, but she didn’t, so I just had to be creative.  I used a smallish (6”-size) oven-safe bowl for a rounded top and my two 6” cake pans from my sister-in-law Mel’s bridal shower cake (here).

Friends, one thing I’ve learned (and Aunt Pam wouldn’t agree) is that store-bought cakes are foolproof.  Follow the directions and you’re golden.  In this case, I baked two Betty Crocker ‘confetti’ cakes and added a little pink food coloring since my party theme was COLORFUL and the girls’ fave color is pink.

I learned from Mel’s shower cake that using wax or parchment paper at the bottom of the pans and bowl, PLUS greasing and flouring each pan, will allow you to bring them out of the pans post-baking with as much ease as possible.

SO, grease each pan/bowl with butter or shortening.  Then shake around some flour until the butter is thoroughly coated.  Then place a circle of wax/parchment paper to cover the bottoms of the pans/bowl.

I filled the 6” pans about 2/3 full with the pink batter (they overflowed a little bit, so ½ full would be safer – though when cakes overflow all you have to do is cut the tops flat and even).  I filled the bowl about ½ full of the batter.  I made cupcakes out of everything I had remaining.

Bake per instructions, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool completely.

Before you remove the cakes from the pans, slide a sharp serrated knife across the tops to slice the tops flat.  Remove from pans.  Remove the cake from the bowl and cut it flat on the non-bowl side if necessary so it will sit flat on the other two layers.

6" layers

Next you make the frosting.  I used the Wilton instructions here and then colored ½ the frosting bright pink.  I used half butter (for flavor) half white shortening (for sturdiness).  Shaun’s eyes bugged out of his head when he saw how bright it was.  The girls thought it was AMAZING.

The bottom two layers I used white frosting.  Of course you can use whatever colors you want.  Layer them up like any layer cake.  I used a large serving fork and scraped the sides with the prongs to make the side frosting look like the cupcake wrapper creases (Shaun’s idea).

I put a nice big blob of frosting on top of the two 6-inch cake layers for putting the rounded bowl top cake on.  Place it on and fill in any gabs with frosting.

Frosting the top was super easy.  I used a large star shape cake decorating tip and covered the entire top with big pink stars, leaving no gaps at all.

I found large, colorful sprinkles and the girls, Shaun and I decorated the top with those.  Now I allowed the cake to harden slightly for several hours.  The outside will form a slight crust so it’s not as easy to nick and dent your creation, but the inside frosting will still be nice and creamy.

I saved the remaining pink and white frosting.

This is me saving the rest of the frosting

After the outer frosting had hardened slightly, and more importantly, the girls had gone to bed, I mixed a little green into the white frosting.  Using a tiny circular writing tip, I wrote “Happy Birthday Katie & Emma” onto the cupcake top and the numeral ‘4’ onto the side.

The girls got to decorate their own individual cupcakes

Done – and isn’t it adorable?!