Perhaps we let the photos show how a few layers of chocolate cake and a dozen mini-cupcakes with peppermint frosting became the birthday cake for a sleepover party with 12 girls, all around the age of 11 years. I did the baking and shaping, frosted between the layers and applied a bit of crumb coat on Friday.
This was one of the most interesting cakes we’ve made and the result was worth the 10 hours it took to make it and clean up the mess.
First, the girls added vegetable food colors to the white peppermint cream cheese frosting, creating light blue, sky blue and an aqua blue/green in separate bowls. Originally we were going to have stripes of color from white to darker blue, one color on each layer. Then I suggested that we use the same technique I’d used in my Rainbow Jones* and it was agreed after we looked at the blog post. The reader can see the frosting colors lined up on the plate and used for the four layers, with a space I left on purpose (by placing cake layer top side up whilst the others were placed with the bottom side up) to give the impression of a place where fish and critters might hide.
Both girls mixed the frosting colors and frosted something important for the end result. I demonstrated how to swipe the spatula across the three colors and apply it to the cake and the cupcakes. The birthday girl frosted the cake and her sister frosted the cupcakes. Jobs for everybody is the key to being in the kitchen!
After the frosting was applied came the application of candy critters and appropriately colored candy pebbles, followed by coloring the remaining frosting to a shade of purple/gray and the creation (from a piece of the cake cut off to shape the dome earlier) of a gender-neutral octopus whose tentacles reached down to the cupcakes.
Lady Lolita VandenBug put her seal of approval on the finished cake, too. (She’ll probably approve using the leftover purple/gray peppermint cream cheese frosting on a batch of brownies later in the week. We’ll see who wants to eat those after they look at the color of the frosting.)
It was a well-loved cake on which candles sporting different flame colors were inserted when it was time to sing and be happy.
Oops! I forgot the addition of candles and the reason for nickname Busy Octopus:
Ms Chef in Seattle 
Super cute 😀
LikeLike