Woo-hoo, cake!

Yesterday, we had the family over for Big Bear's "official" birthday party. This year we let him chose what kind of party he wanted to have, and we were a little surprised that he decided he just wanted to invite his grandparents and his aunt and have an at-home gathering. His only hard and fast stipulation was that there had to be a birthday cake. And it had to be blue. And it had to have Toby the Tram Engine on it (who is one of Thomas the Tank Engine's friends).

On Friday afternoon, I baked the cake (a traditional white cake using a recipe from the cookbook, Baking Illustrated) and applied the white icing base. That evening, my husband and I got to work on the decorating. I mixed the icing colors, Keith drew Toby and piped him onto the top of the cake, and then I finished it off with some border work and lettering.

This was the inspiration picture (photo from here):

And this is the completed cake:

Keith did an amazing job! Big Bear was completely thrilled. And not only was Toby on top, but the inside was, as requested, blue:

It was quite pretty, really. I used food coloring paste ("sky blue") in the batter to get the color.

And then there was one last gift from Mama:

Ever since I made the name pillows a few weeks ago, Big Bear has been clamoring to get one of his own. In blue. How could I refuse? I smudged the name in the picture above so as to maintain Big Bear's secret identity, but I can tell you that the letters were all blue. And much to my joy, he LOVES it! Yay!