pennant cake topper

  Monday was my daughter’s 5th birthday.  She turned 5.  I am just about recovered from it.  When I was a kid, my mom baked a cake(from a box!), invited a few kids over and maybe there was pin the tail on the donkey.  Things have changed.

  There were two parties, two cakes, one batch of cupcakes that I baked in a paranoid frenzy the morning of her kid party, worried there wouldn’t be enough cake.  The kid party was at 9am in the morning at a bouncy castle place.  12 hyper 5 years old bouncing and shrieking in time to heart thumping music.  And the price per head was similar to what we paid at our wedding.  Plus invites that required a photo shoot and presents.

  And one more factor.  The cake.  I have been cursed with her birthday cakes.  Every year I have wanted to make her an amazing cake and they have turned out monstrously terrible. Last year I tried to make her a pirate cake.  I woke up to find the poop deck had staged a mutiny and broken off the back. Did I decide this year to keep it simple or (gasp) buy a cake as my mother gently suggested?  Hell, no!  I decided on a cake covered in sprinkles with a cute pennant banner on top.  Easy, right? I spend a LOT of time on Pinterest.

  And I have to say, I think the curse has been broken.  I’m not crazy about the little white blobs on top-in my mind they looked much better.  But overall, a solid B+.  I had a moment when I was picking up the cake to roll it sideways in sprinkles that was tense.  But it worked like a charm.  I froze the cake solid before I rolled it so the 4 layers wouldn’t shift.  There’s a great tutorial on how to do this that I used here.

To make the pennant cake topper, I designed the triangle letter cutouts in photoshop, printed them on card stock and cut them out.  I used a glue stick to attach them to baker’s twine and tied the twine to bamboo skewers.  If you like my letters, you can get the pdf here.

 And on the chance that this blog is still around when my little munchkin is all grown up….Ella, you are simply wonderful.  Every day for the last five years has been precious to me.  You call yourself the strongest, most powerful girl in the world.  I wish for you that you will always feel that way. There a 4 billion people in the world.  You are my favorite one.