Ni-Hao, Cake!

 

My baby brother is 5 years old!  Can you believe it?  The little guy is growing up!  In fact, we visited the Georgia Aquarium recently and I can remember when we went to the Tennessee Aquarium years ago when Adam was only 2.  He sat in a stroller and wasn't nearly as excited about seeing big fish or "Dory" fish like this time. He was still cute back then though!

If you are unfortunate enough not to have a little person in your home who does not watch Nick Jr., then you are probably wondering who the heck is on Adam's cake.  Meet Rintoo!  He is a fun-loving, albeit mischievous five-year-old tiger on Ni-Hao, Kai-Lan, the most adorable show on TV ever.  (To give you some quick background in your are unfamiliar with Kai-Lan and co.:  it's a show about a little bilingual Chinese girl who teaches kids how to speak Chinese-- like Dora the Exporer-- and also about the culture while teaching important lessons like sharing.)

Anyway, Adam asked me to "please make a Rintoo cake (!!!!!!)" so even though I had no idea how I was going to decorate this lemon cake 24 hours before it was completed, I knew Rintoo would be there.  (In fact, I didn't even know if he wanted a "circle" cake or a "rectangle" cake until I was about to pour the batter in because he kept changing his mind!)  But I found a cute image of the happy tiger and decided that he needed a speech bubble to wish Adam a happy birthday, and I used that to make a frozen buttercream transfer.  (I remembered to reverse the image!!)

The flowers and mushrooms make the cake look a little girly in my opinion, but I tried to make the cake themed around the show as much as possible.  The icing was thinned down to make the transfer, so the flowers are a little droopy.  Something else that I would've done differently:  the words are written with a #5 tip but I think a #3 would work out better.

Overall, I'm pleased with this cake, especially considering that I didn't start baking until 9pm the night before the party and that I decorated between coaching Adam's soccer team, working at the concession stand, and watching James' soccer game.  Saturday was very busy!  Adam was pleased with the cake too, I believe, even if he didn't actually eat any at the party (?).  James, however, had two slices (and remember, he's the one who claims not to like cake) and Mom liked it too.  Although, the cake was lemon flavor, so that might have something to do with it.  I thought it tasted alright (I used a Duncan Heines box mix with an extender).  But it looked cute!

I won't be posting for a while because Hillary's birthday cake is up next and she has requested that I keep her cake a complete secret until reveal time, including blog posts.  So I won't have any updates about that until the beginning of next week.  In the meantime, perhaps you could check out my Facebook, Flickr or Twitter.  See you next week! ;-)