Challenge : Kid's Birthday Party

Okay, here's a quick way to save a good $25+, by doing the cake yourself... by investing in a cute cake pan, and some food coloring, you can customize & tackle your child's birthday without rushing to the store and paying out the wazoo... ;)

Quick tip- be sure to sign up for your local craft store's coupons- such as JoAnn's or Michael's. Those 40%-50% off coupons are awesome, and if you plan it out right, will save you a ton. Also, your grocery store's BOGO's for cake mixes & icing? Also a great way to have a backup plan or another cake to make.

So for this one, we have a little girl who chose a horse cake... honestly, I was uncreative and used the suggested design that came with the label on the pan. However, by cooking the cake itself the night before (to allow it to cool fully), then icing it the next morning with an icing bag (I used to use a plastic bag with a small portion snipped off back before I ever invested in the tips/bags- it works pretty well for writing & decorating).

Since I'm a dork, I went along with having both a chocolate and a vanilla cake- wasn't planning on doing two, but didn't take too much extra time. The nice thing about these pans is that it has sort of a raised outline to guide you, so it's not too bad at all! You can either use a nice big plate, or I had purchased the cake boards a while back, and just covered it with tin foil (this was going to be an outdoor party- so less to worry about later on!)

I bought vanilla icing since the white makes it much easier to dye the different colors. Before dying, I started off by just doing drops of icing (you can also "paint" the icing on to give it a smoother texture). I figured the body of the horse face was the base and best to start with for me...

Then I used a little bit of red food coloring to make the pink, and just strung the icing along for the hair & outline/accents. I used plain blue food coloring to make the eyes, then mixed the rest of the blue into the pink to make the purple for the bridle. 

For the chocolate ("Boy") horse, I did pretty much the same, except used milk chocolate icing for the body and dark chocolate icing for the mane, then leftover colored icing for the accents.

Voila! Happy Kids!!! :) 

Total Cost? About $14 for both cakes ($7 for the pan with my coupon- then about $7 for two boxes of cake mix and 4 things of icing -on sale) Keep in mind next time no need to buy a pan :)