Berry 1st Birthday

 Here are some simple to make Berry 1st Birthday themed cakes.

The tier cake is an 8" bottom tier and a 6" top tier.  They are frosted in a pale pink American Buttercream and decorated with fondant strawberries.  I used this line drawing to create fondant cutters with my 3D printer.  I made two sizes: 1-3/4" and 1-1/2".  If you would like to read more about making your own 3D printed cutters, click HERE.

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The strawberry is a cutter and embosser combined so I cut out the strawberry shape from red fondant and then embossed the little divots for the seeds. I tried painting the divots with white and yellow food gel, but that didn't look very good, so I just cut out tiny yellow circles and used those for the seeds.  It was very time consuming because I had 25 strawberries to decorate.  

I used a rose calyx shaped cutter to make the green calyx part of the strawberry, and added a little texture to the sepals using a veiner tool.   For the lettering I used FMM's Funky Tappits 3cm upper and lower case.

For the smash cake I baked two 8" round cakes, and carved them into the shape of a strawberry.  I frosted with a thick coating of white buttercream, and then added a thin coating of red buttercream on top of that.  I wanted to limit the amount of red buttercream because I didn't want the poor baby's face and hands to get too stained up with red food dye.

Normally I would have made the strawberry seeds out of fondant, but I was afraid the tiny fondant pieces would be a choking hazard so I made them out of buttercream.  I smeared a thin coat of buttercream on some parchment paper and froze the buttercream for 10 minutes.  Then I used a tiny heart shaped plunger cutter to cut out little seeds and placed them on the cake.  I should have used an oval cutter instead, but I couldn't find them in my bins of supplies.  Guess I need to buy more.

The buttercream defrosted and softened very quickly so I had to keep popping the buttercream strip in the freezer so it could harden up again. 

For the greenery on the strawberry I went ahead and used fondant.  The pieces were large enough that the baby could pick them up and gnaw on them if she wanted.  I just cut the pieces by hand and then used a random silicone veiner to give it some texture. 

So in the end this was a pretty easy cake to put together.  The hardest part was placing all the seeds/pits on the strawberries.  Next time I will just leave the little holes unfilled.

Happy Decorating,

Carol