The making of a 4-year old princess

We celebrated Jessica's birthday on Sunday. I decided Sunday is a great day for a birthday, because you can open presents in the afternoon and have time to play with them.

Jessica had a great time, but her favorite present was a box of dress-up clothes. James spotted them at Toys-R-Us in the pink aisle, and we knew they'd be perfect for her. Let the fashion show begin:

And of course, playing with the best present: the bubble wrap.

Jess wanted a rainbow cake for her birthday, with rainbow sprinkles and rainbow sprinkles on the inside. Sounds easy enough, eh?

Well, when I baked the cake, tested it with a toothpick, took it out of the oven. While it rested, the middle sank. I took it out of the pan and could tell it wasn't cooked in the middle. I had to leave right then to pick up the kids from a Primary activity, so I quickly cut it in half, put it into two pans, and stuck it the warm oven. What else could I do? Well, that did nothing for the cake, so I took my 4 children to the grocery store on a Saturday in the rain to pick up another rainbow sprinkle cake.

I threw out the first one , and baked the second one. I still sank a bit in the middle because I tested it to early, but not too bad. When I took it out of the pan, however, it stuck horribly. I had put wax paper on the bottom, but the bottom corners still stuck. James suggested that I put the sunken middle and the torn edges together in the middle so the top would be flat. I did so, but got a somewhat lop-sided cake.

I made the icing and dyed all the colors. I learned that dark blue + dark red does not equal dark purple. It makes purply-gray. So I threw out that icing and used light blue and light red to get a light purple. I covered the cake, with barely enough icing to cover. There were some bare spots on the top, but no biggie -- just cover those parts with the rainbow!

I started making the rainbow, then remembered it was supposed to have sprinkles on it. The icing was dry and crusty, so I knew the sprinkles wouldn't fit. So I sprayed it with a bit of water, then shook the sprinkles on it. The colors from the sprinkles then ran in the wet icing. I finally finished up, put it on the cake platter, put the cover on -- oh wait, the clouds are just tall enough that they were going to get smooshed by the cover. My resourceful husband suggested that I put something around the cake platter (like crushed up aluminum foil) for the lid to sit on. It worked perfectly. And no one touched the cake and it didn't get dropped and she loved it! The end.