Last weekend, the kids and I had a lumberjack first birthday to attend for my best friend’s son. I was of course commissioned to do the cake, but I always am from her! I have been helping make her kids goodies since before I made goodies for anyone else. I am not even sure why I let her pay me because I would do it for free just like I always have, but she insists. Maybe she is hoping I will quit my job and bake cakes so that when she convinces her hubs that she can quit hers, she can come drink wine with me in my kitchen. Hey, we can all have dreams, right?
It is February, so the plan was dress like a lumberjack in your fleece, eat chili, snuggle up outside under some blankets, and roast some marshmallows. Well, turns out it was 65 degrees and sunny outside…in February…CRAZY! We still ate chili and did turn on the fire for the kids to make a smore, but mostly, the kids played on the swing set and the adults talked.
To go with her lumberjack/outdoor theme, she wanted a bear cake and a smash cake of any kind. We tacked on the cookies later when I found this cute buffalo plaid stencil to try my new air brush kit my sister got me for Christmas. I started with the cookies a few days before the party. They took a couple days to complete for drying time. I baked them on one day, iced the red the next, did the stencil on the third, and then the white icing on the fourth day. I wanted to make sure the red royal icing was really dry before I laid a stencil on it. I am still not sure at what point royal icing is deemed dry, but since I can only work on these things at night, I just go with the next day.
This is when I wish I had a projector or a KopyKake to help with the design on top. Trying to freehand is really hard. My momma told me maybe I should find a projector solution to put on my Christmas list….and I agree! Anyway, we did with what we had and I did different designs on different cookies. Here is the name and lumberjack up close.
Once I had the whole lot of them done, I made sure they were good and dry before I individually packed them for the party.
Lumberjack Party Cookies
Wrapped Lumberjack Cookies
Now that the cookies were done, onto the cakes! Both cakes were fairly easy to assemble. The bear cake took one 10″ round, one 6″ round, and two 4″ rounds. The setup looked like this:
Bear Cake Setup
Once stacked, I frosted the light brown color first on the nose and ear areas. Then, with my “hair” tip, I added the brown fur to the rest of the bear head. All that was left was the little bit of black detail for the eyes, nose and mouth. It was a simple but cute design.
Bear Cake
The last thing was the smash cake. My friend wanted something simple that her son could break into during the party. I was pondering what to do as I was staring at all the extra icing I had from the bear cake. Then it hit me… Lumberjack…Lumber…Stump. And better yet, it used nearly all the same colors as the bear. Win Win. The smash cake was a two layer 4″ cake. I frosted the whole cake brown and messed the sides with a fork and toothpick to try and mimic bark. I added the light brown “rings” on top to resemble the cut wood. At that point, I wasn’t convinced that there was no question that the cake was a stump. So I added roots and some grass to the bottom which I think helped.
Tree Stump Smash Cake
The whole set was fun to do and my friend loved it. Doing kids parties are my favorite for the themes alone. I have another one this weekend, so look out for that post next week. I am OFFICIALLY caught up. YAY ME!
Clara
(Sim)fully Sweet 
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