Rock on

I didn't get a photo of Carter's cake this year. Hopefully someone took a photo or I can grab a scren shot from video...

This cake was a toughie, I tell you. Carter is really into robots and specifically the Iron Giant. I decided to bake a robot cake for him, and that I would use the kitchenaid mixer bowl, which is somewhat bullet shaped, and make IG's head, continuing with my tradition of having us eat heads for birthdays (monkey head for Carter's 2nd, tiger head for Bun's 6th).

Lemme tell you: there is a lot of volume to one of those. Took 2 hours to bake. TWO HOURS. Amazingly it was moist--I was afraid the outer half would be like a rock. Then when I had the cake out and cooling (with a whopping 45 mints until party time) I realized it was really too squatty to look right. I had a little extra batter and baked a layer quick-like to heighten the head. With fresh buttercream sitting at the ready I realized there was no way I would be done in time to be at the pizza place by the time guests arrived.

So I shoved my husband and kids out the door and told him to hold down the fort, that I would be there as fast as humanly possible.

Frosting it was a miracle. You can't put what is basically butter onto a hot cake. I take that back--you totally can, but you can NOT expect it to stay on the outside of the cake where you wanted it. Sooo, I had the layers in the freezer, and would slather on some grey icing, then put it back in to cool and hopefully set up. After a bit of this boogie, I threw some very vague face features--bright, absinthe colored eyes, black mouth and a 'ridge' on top of the head that went down to also form the anthropormorphic nose-ish area. Bam. Gotta be done, since being there is more important than being perfect.

Thankfully I live 3 mins from the pizza place that served as our rain date party location. I was only 18 mins late! Kids were all having a blast playing on the play area structure, climbing, crawling through tubes and sliding. Pizza was ready about 15 mins later, and the rest of the party went off really rather well. The 24 blue, green, and yellow balloons I bought that morning as combo decoration and party favors really made the kids happy--thanks to Norbert for untangling that mess, by the way. OMG--the strings all wove around each other in the car, looking like a maypole when it's all braided.

The cake? Delicious. It was still warm and possibly the freshest damn cake ever served at a birthday party.

Carter was so happy when everyone was singing Happy Birthday to him. It was finally *his* party! HIS song, with *his* name. His cake. Carter was a very happy and content birthday boy, quietly enjoying that part of the party, with that little smile he smiles when he is happy and taking in what's happening.

I asked him later how he liked the cake. He said he loved it very much. I asked if he thought it looked like a robot. No, Mama. I asked him what he thought it did look like. A rock.

Too funny!