Gabriel's First St. Patricks Day B-Day

Last weekend's cancelled cake was on for this weekend and I knocked it out of the park if I do say so myself... I might be biased because the first "Irish" cake I made last year was a big favorite of mine... Thats this one above.  It was an "adult" cake made with alcoholic irish cream filling... which was super yummy! I hand painted the little shamrocks on the balls on the bottom, and shaded the shamrock on the top with food coloring.  It was definitely fun to make, but I am very partial to anything Irish and/or green in general!


SO... I was at a birthday party for a very special little 4 year old (she had a Kai Lan themed party... one day I will post those too), and one of her guests really enjoyed the cake.  I just so happened to have my camera on me, so I showed her some other cakes on the camera and she instantly fell in love with the one above.  Her son Gabriel was born on St. Patty's and she wanted it for his 1st birthday.  And here is the result!

She wanted it slightly different... obviously not alcoholic... and with a leprechaun instead of the big clover... The leprechaun is definitely my favorite part.  Its 3 layers of chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  All decorations are in fondant, so it is completely edible.  Even the gold accents are made from edible gold dust.

The little leprechaun was made last week... and he was so much fun... I found his design here... DDpiesSlice and tried my best to follow along... again, I made it slightly different so I didnt totally "plagiarize" but I was so pleased with it.  The face is my favorite, especially the beard... but there is a lot of detail in the face with shading and slicing and texture.  It took a good amount of time, but to be honest... I could spend hours on those little details and it would feel like minutes.  His hands were tough, but I think in the end they came out pretty decent too.

Edible Markers are my new favorite thing... you can write all over things and its ok! haha... I get so nervous writing for cakes... always afraid of misspelling or my horrendous handwriting in general. But being able to use markers over icing is definitely a plus.  I like this pic because you also get to see the back of the leprechauns head with his puff of red hair!

More detail on the hair and a close up of the pot of gold... again, all fondant... the little gold pieces are flecked with the gold dust and I made the shamrock fairly easily.











All in all I was pretty pleased with how the cake turned out, and my new client was thrilled... baby Gabriel didnt seem to even know the day was for him, but we can cut him some slack... he's only one! Cute baby though... and hopefully she'll remember me when his second birthday comes along next year!