Ella is One!!

I have had a very busy weekend!  My son's birthday is on January 6th and last year, he was lucky enough to have his daughter born on the same day!  So, this year my daughter-in-law ask me to make their cakes.  Her only request was that Ella's cake be a rubber ducky, since she loves them so much, but I could do whatever I wanted for Chad's cake.  So, I went to Pinterest for inspiration!!  I will show you how I made Ella's cake today and will post Chad's cake tomorrow!

 This is pinned to my board "Inspiration"

 I considered just going and buying a rubber ducky to put on the top of her cake, but decided that I wanted to make one that she could eat.  So, off to the store and bought some "Gum Paste"

I have never worked with it before, but have watched cake decorating shows on the Foodnetwork channel and it always looked kinda' like working with clay or play dough, pretty easy right?  It's just a simple rubber ducky after all!  I was wrong!  It dries out pretty quickly, I had to constantly put a little vegetable oil on it to keep it moist and it got these tiny little cracks.  Plus, it was really hard to get it perfectly smooth.  The first time around I was gonna' make the body and the head two different pieces, but once I got them made it didn't look right, so remade it into one piece.  I also found that using a toothpick to smooth the edges of the beak and the wings into the body worked pretty good.  It was a lot more work than I thought it was gonna' be!

Now that the duck is made, It's time for the cake.  I knew I wanted to make it small, because she was gonna' have it all to herself.  The first birthday is always so much fun!!  I used the large muffin tins and cut off the tops of two of them to make her cake.  I also thought that whipped cream would be a better option for her rather than regular icing.  For one, it wouldn't be so sugary and heavy and for two, I thought it would look a lot more like bath bubbles.  I found this stuff called "Icing Spray".  So I piled on the whipped cream and then just sprayed it with blue icing spray.  I also added a few little gum paste bubbles.

Here it is!!

One last little tidbit on Ella's cake.  It flashed thru my head that I should wait to assemble the cake at their house, but didn't listen to that tiny little voice.  Got it all ready and headed over.  Holding it in one hand and driving with other.  Once I got there, my daughter and her family arrived at the same time, so I ask for some help carrying things in.  I gave this cake to my oldest granddaughter to carry.  We made it in the door and I hear Lexi say, "Landin!"  I look over and the cake was just a heap of blue whipped cream!  Landin had hit her arm and it fell!  I called my husband to bring the "repair kit"  More whipped cream and blue spray!  I cleaned up ducky and the bubbles and reassembled. 

Good as New!!

Happy Birthday Ella!  Nana Loves You!!