Winter Birthday Cake

As I stated previously, Monday was Alex's birthday party. I knew we wouldn't be doing much in terms of games and decorations because he wanted to donate his gifts to Children's Hospital. To me it would seem a little silly to request donations and then spend $40-50 on decorations that will get tossed. Instead, we bought extra toys to put in the donation bag. So essentially, the only thing we did for his party was provide dinner food and cake. (Click here or here for those recipes.)

Knowing that he wasn't going to get an all out birthday party like my kids are used to, I wanted to make the birthday cake extra special so I asked Alex to help design it. We created a document in MS Word and used various shapes and colors to develop the idea. Well, Alex got a little carried away. You see, he spends his t.v. time allotment watching Cake Boss, Sweet Genius, Chopped, etc. He is all about food. And sadly, I do not compare to greatness of Buddy Valastro. Alex requested: A blue cake, covered with a criss-cross pattern, a blanket of "snow" on top, and snowflakes placed randomly around the cake. He wanted it topped with sparkling Christmas ornaments as well as miniature ornaments circling the base. Oh, and we wanted a "stuffed cake" reminiscent of I Am Baker. Sounds easy, right? I don't think I mentioned that we planned this the night before.
I woke up Monday morning ready to start baking the cakes and making the ornaments. Unfortunately, the ornaments were not cooperating and kept breaking on me. Hopefully I will have time this week to post a tutorial on making the ornaments. It was a lot of {frustrating} fun.
Here is what is final cake looked like:

And in case you're wondering, this is what a "stuffed" cake looks like:

In the original instructions to make a stuffed cake (found here) she suggested freezing the cakes before stuffing. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to let the cake freeze and unthaw before the party so I skipped that step but trust me when I say, DON'T SKIP IT!
I loved this cake so much that I wanted to do a giveaway on my Facebook page. The second time, I didn't stuff the cake, I just cut out the appropriate pieces and "glued" them to the main cake with buttercream icing and used fudge icing between the chocolate pieces. Because this cake was given away, I don't have a picture to show you of how it turned out and in fact, I don't even know if it worked without falling apart. Guess I'll have to wait until the new year to find out.
Here is the giveaway cake: