So my son turned one on April 16th and we celebrated this along with his baptism today. 

 I had seen woodland themed parties on Pinterest and wanted to make a fox cake for forever now so this was just the type of event I’d been waiting for. 

I wanted to use this awesome slice of oak tree I found at Michaels and thought a 3D cartoon fox would be great. Challenging, but doable. 

I knew the head would need to be made of styrofoam because I wanted it oversized (like the dog in The Mask), a little over the top to exaggerate the expression.  

I baked some Heavenly White Cake, a Colette Peters recipe that is good for carving, and even had enough batter to make Matt a smash cake.

And some owl cupcakes using Oreo cookies. I scraped off their icing and used fondant for the whites of the eyes because of the crumbs on their filling. A cashew became a beak and chocolate chips were irises. I made a dark chocolate ganache for the body. 

Here they are in their nest. A cupcake carrier. 

So the white cake was flavoured with maple and the buttercream with blueberries. I think the cake what quite dry but I didn’t want to weigh it down with a simple syrup as I usually do. 

I forgot to get my black gel colour from the closet in Matt’s room so at 3 am I threw in the towel, exhausted, figuring I could skip drawing in the fox’s mouth. 

I was 95% done this cake at 11pm. Then I decided to make a blue birdie to sit on his head. This little creature gave me such a hard time! I used an egg shaped styrofoam ball for the body but couldn’t figure out how to make the head and neck so he would be looking down at the fox.  I eventually got to something I could live with, wired the legs, stuck them into the fox’s cranium and added little feet using brown floral tape and called it a night. 

This morning as I was setting up the buffet table it occurred to me that I could finally draw in his mouth and I’m glad I did. 

There wasn’t much left to the cake within minutes of singing happy birthday. 

 And on to planning my daughter’s third birthday…