Tasty Tuesday {A Pretty Birthday Cake}

We celebrated two birthdays this weekend, since Avery and Sam's birthdays are four days apart.  Avery had been asking for a cake with Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) on it, and although I had a concept in my head, I knew that it would take alot of patience and trial and error to get it right.  We had decided on yellow and pink decorations and paper goods, and then I stumbled on this lovely cake via The Pioneer Woman.  I couldn't wait to try my hand at it!

The cake in itself is beautiful, and the rosettes were easy to create.  I really liked the idea of the interior of the cake having vertical stripes, but again, could see alot of time and patience involved in the method suggested in the tutorial, so I used a checkerboard cake pan and poured the batter in the same compartments for each layer to create the same look simply by pouring and baking (no slicing, constructing and freezing!).  Please keep in mind that this was my first try -- but Avery -- and everyone else LOVED it!  I will make this for lots of girly birthdays in the future.  Rachael has already requested this cake for her party.  And I must add that the spray food coloring is an ingenius invention!

Here is the cake in all white -- very pretty as is:

I painted it yellow next.

Then I added touches of pink; here it is complete.

And the birthday girl with her cake.  Happy Birthday, sweet Avery.  I can't believe you're five years old!

The cut cake; not perfect, but everyone thought it was fun!  I just added paste food coloring to a white cake batter.

Sam's birthday is Thursday, but since we had the family together, we wanted to sing to him, too.  He got Blue's Clues Cupcakes.  My big boy will be two years old!