Lauren's First Birthday Party: The Cake Smash

Cake. Oh the cake. I spent weeks in class learning how to bake the perfect cake. Hours perfecting the smoothest of icings and prettiest of designs. And then a monkey wrench got thrown in to the mix...in my cake mix to be exact. NO EGGS ALLOWED! How does one make a cake without eggs? Well, I hit the web in search of a cake recipe that would be yummy and survivable. One of my favorite go-to forums for all things baby has a sub board called Food Allergies. I saw someone suggest subbing the eggs with one can of soda. I had one can of Diet Sprite, so that is what I used. The cake came out moist and fluffy. Something the generic applesauce does not do. Yay!

I baked all of the cakes two days before the party at home and then transported them to my parent's house in Temecula. I made Lauren a deliciously gross icing concoction of Vegetable Shortening, Powdered Sugar and Water. This was actually our practice icing in class. It was safe...and it worked.

For everyone else, I baked a 2 tier cake with buttercream frosting and strawberry cheesecake filling. It was delicious, but it had a "situation" the night before during construction. It developed a crack and started sliding. A lot! So Justin and Kendall dove in and helped build up the cake. My plan was to have it out on display, but we left it in the refrigerator til it was time to be cut. It was delicious, but not my proudest piece of work.

Lauren loved her cake. We did it outside for easy clean up. She really tore in to it and ate a lot too. She got super messy and I freaked out. Kendall and I both ended up messy in the process of trying to clean her up. When Justin removed the cake from her tray, she got really upset. Thankfully, my mom and Justin stepped in and got Lauren all scrubbed up.