In February I had decided that I wanted to make a cake for Kaden's first birthday party. I had never made a birthday cake before nor had I ever made fondant, but I knew that my dad's birthday was in February so I thought I could do a small practice run for his birthday. I had never made or used fondant before so I thought I could teach myself with a recipe I found online.

So I made my dad a cake just to see if I could. Then in the beginning of May did a little research to find the style of toy cake I wanted for Kaden. I found a great idea and went with it.

The fondant was the first step which I made two days in advance. The recipe is a bag of powdered sugar and 16 oz. bag of marshmallows and 2 tablespoons water. Microwave the marshmallows 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between until melted (about 2.5 minutes total). Add powdered sugar into marshmallows. (Make sure to put a bunch of Crisco on the counter you will be working on and on your hands.)

Pour out Marshmallows and powdered sugar onto counter and begin mixing with hands. Reapply Crisco as needed. Knead until all powdered sugar is mixed in. Once completed, fondant should rest overnight.

The next night I made all the cakes. The bottom Layer uses three Funfetti cake mixes. It's a 12 inch by 12 inch square pan with 1.5 cake mixes per layer (its two layers high with a later of simple buttercream icing in between).

The second layer is a 8 inch by 8 inch square with 2 boxes of Chocolate cake mix (one for each layer with some leftover). The top is a 6 inch round pan with strawberry cake mix.

I let all those cool down overnight and then started making the characters and decorating the cakes on Saturday. On Saturday my dad came over and I "taught" him how to work the fondant and the food coloring and he helped me all day.

We worked from 8 AM to 7 PM on the characters, cake designs and everything. Sunday was the party and so we had to move the cake downstairs and outside by the pool. That was quite the task, but everything went smoothly and my son LOVED the cake!