A Krusty Krab Birthday party!

Dude. Why does time have to go so quickly!? Not only did my BABY just turn a whopping 4 (!) but that happened 4 weeks ago and I'm just now getting the blog up about his awesome party.

First I need to explain the history of my kids and their birthday cake choices. The first birthdays were always picked by me for obvious reasons, but as soon as they developed a personality and interests, it was clear what each one wanted. Unfortunately they often wanted the same thing, and sorry, as much as I love them, I just couldn't do that. Where's the creativity in making the same old cake over and over. Luckily it hasn't been too much trouble, until this last birthday. Jacob wanted a spongebob cake. But, I had already done a square yellow cake for Joshua, so I had to think outside the box, er, bun.

So, a giant hamburger patty, aka Krabby Patty, cake was invented.

After a quick trip to googleville, I discovered that I was clearly not original in this whole Huge hamburger as cake idea. Multiple sites were dedicated to their attempts at this feat. Many of them impressed me. Some of them just frightened me, but all of them were helpful in guiding my final choices.

I made a trip to Country Kitchen, our local candy supply store, and purchased my first ever fondant. I opted for the pre-colored stuff to make my life easier, but I'd be willing to try it from scratch next time. I bought primary colors since I'd be needing red for tomatoes, green for lettuce and orange (red and yellow) for cheese. the blue just got thrown out. My apologies to the fondant police.

One of the sites used a brownie for the burger portion of the cake. I thought this was genius, and a very clever way to get as much sugar as possible into this fast food fakery. So, I baked two white cakes and one brownie. I filled one cake pan up higher, to achieve more of a bun look.






I started mixing the yellow fondant with a tiny bit of red fondant. I'm glad I started with a tiny bit of red, because it didn't take much to turn all the yellow I had a nice shade of fake cheese orange. It works a lot like playdoh and was fun to use.

I layed it out on waxed paper and sprayed it with cooking spray, based on recommendations I found online to keep the fondant from drying out.

After I rolled the ball of fondant out flat, I simply cut it into the shape of a piece of american cheese.

I repeated this step until I had 3 slices,

One perfect slice.








The tomatoes were fun to do. Obviously rolling
them into a round circle was key, but one tip I found online was to square off the edges to make them look more like real tomatoes. I just used the blade of a knife and ran it around the edge of the circle. Then, used a toothpick to make the little indents on top for effect.








The lettuce was my favorite part. I used straight green for this, but if I were to do it again, I'd mix some white into, or maybe a little yellow. It was almost too dark green. To get it to look wrinkled like actual lettuce, I took more advice from the trusty ol' internets, and balled up my saran wrap first before pressing the ball out thin with my hand, then wrapped the saran wrap all the way around, making sure to keep it wrinkled. When I pulled the wrap off, it left all the lines, making it look very authentic.



Layering the cakes with a buttercream "mayo", and the cheese. I picked the edges off the brownie to make it look more hamburgery too. And it really did look like actual meat. Kind of creepy.

Added the lettuce and tomatoes....

I placed pine nuts on top to look like sesame seeds. Some sites used sliced almonds, but I thought these would look best.

Also, most of, if not all, the sites I looked at left their buns unfrosted. I opted to frost mine. Too much sugar is not an option on birthdays.

The final product.

I'm not sure you can see them, but the candles on top are spongebob themed, with cute little pineapples, and underwater flowers, and spongebob himself. Not too over the top. I then piped his name with a bright red buttercream to look like ketchup on top. The fries were made of sugar cookies, and drizzled with more "ketchup."

I printed the red and white paper from my computer to cover the cake board.

And, most importantly, the birthday boy LOVED it.

I was nearly done in by a kickity kick ball

My son Jacob turned 3 on Friday. I had a heck of a time thinking of what kind of cake to make him.

He loves Spongebob, trains and balls, but I've already done those cakes. I didn't want to do a similar one for him that I had already done for Joshua.

So, one day I asked Joshua what kind of cake he thought I should do for Jacob, and he gave it some thought. After a few minutes he said, "How about Wow Wow Wubbzy!" My brain did a very quick scan of Wubbzy's shape to determine if I could even make that, and since he is primarily a rectangle, I said "Yes! What a brilliant idea."

When the time finally came to plan the cake, I had opted for just a 9 x 13 white sheet cake that I planned on frosting yellow, and cutting out Wubbzy's little bumps/ears or whatever they are on top of his head. Easy. Peasy.

But, unfortunately at the last minute I also decided to add hands, feet, tail and a kickity kick ball. I cut the hands, feet and trademark tail out of cardboard with the intent of frosting them later. But, the kickity kick ball was going to be a chocolate cake made from scratch, with mousse layers and a ganache frosting. Blue with light blue polka dots...just like on the cartoon.


The sheet cake and appendages came off without a hitch. I frosted them all yellow, and piped dots on and around the cake to embellish. I finally traced all the parts with a black frosting, and made eyes, nose and mouth as well. Wubbzy was complete, and ridiculously cute if I do say so myself.

The chocolate cake on the other hand....

I have no idea what went wrong. I've made cakes for years, and never have I seen such a thing. The cake would not come out of the pans at all. They crumbled and cracked and fell apart, but I was determined to salvage it. I managed to get one cake round on the cake plate, then topped it with some chocolate mousse. So far so good. Then, I carefully placed the next cake on top. Very shaky looking, but I persisted. I topped it off with more mousse and walked away to rinse the dishes. When I returned, half the ball had fallen off. The cake cracked right along the side and fell. I glued the crap out of that thing with frosting and mousse and mangled it back to a semi-circular looking object. I was not about to be outsmarted by some flour and eggs, by god!

Then, my brilliant ganache idea was up next to bat. I poured it on top of the ballish shaped object, and watched as it ran all over my freaking table, and over the already perfectly frosted yellow hands of the Wubster.

I was not daunted by this however. Apparently I was in a good mood that day, because otherwise I normally would've tossed the whole entire chocolate mess into the garbage...or more than likely eaten the crap out of it from stress, but apparently this candida diet has also helped me cope with these type of situations. Who knew.


After cleaning up most of the spillage of the ganache, I carefully piped cute little light blue circles of buttercream all over the ball...only to watch them SLIDE RIGHT OFF!

I grabbed those frickin' frosting balls and walloped them back in the ganache bowl. I scraped off all the ganache I could without compromising even more of the cake/mousse fiasco, and mixed up a bit of dark blue buttercream. I swirled the buttercream in with the other remnants of blue ganache and chocolate mousse, creating, in my own mind, a nice tie dyed look to this lovely kickity kick ball. Not exactly the same as the show, but those are the breaks.

I carefully piped MORE light blue buttercream circles. Some of the ones on the edge started to slide off again, but I didn't care. I was SO done with that ball.


I cleaned up the ganache spillage off of everything I could and managed to mess up more of the yellow Wubbzyness, re-piped some of that, and called it done. Took my photos and wondered if I should Photoshop them before putting them on here.


In an effort of honesty and imperfection, I will post the actual photos. I'm so not an expert, but I pretend like I am in my own head, so this just kills me that the ball didn't turn out. I will do some research to see what happened. I don't think I left out an ingredient, but that's not an impossibility.

Most importantly, Jacob had a great time and loved his cake, and of course had no clue as to what mommy went through to get it just right for him. Everyone ate both cakes, and they tasted great, despite the crumbliness of the chocolate one. The favorite, oddly enough, was the chocolate mousse cake.

But from now on when I watch Wow Wow Wubbzy with my son, I will always, always hold a grudge for that Kickity Kick ball...

Before shot of the Wow Wow Wubbzy cake.

Wubbzy and Kickity, barely hanging on.

Closeup of kickity, giving into the pressure.

Jacob had a great day anyway! He loved his new light-up dino shirt, too.