Addy's Birthday Cake

 Addy's Birthday Cake was a Pinterest project through and through!  

To start off I used this awesome recipe to bake my cakes!  It is called Italian Cream Cheese Cake.  I rarely succeed at making cakes from scratch.  They typically taste fine, but not amazing, and if I feel that if I'm going to go to all the work of baking from scratch it needs to taste better than a box cake.

THIS RECIPE TASTES BETTER THAN A BOX CAKE!  

It has pecans and coconut in it, and a few special preparation methods, but in reality is was super easy to make.  

Sidenote: Don't you love the cakestand?? Jon bought it for me a long time ago.  I love the detailing. I can't find the exact one I have online anymore, but there are lots similar if you love it as much as I do!

I then found this tutorial on doing this "petal" frosting method.  This also was super easy, just a bit tedious.  I think it was a bit harder because I used cream cheese frosting which is heavier so it sagged a bit more.  But it still ended up looking B.E.A.UTIFUL!

Tip:  Need an extra set of hands to fill you pastry bag in the kitchen??  Place it in a cup!

I also made my own cake topper using the following tutorial.  I used a stencil to make one, and then I free handed one... I liked the freehanded one better, so that's what we use :)

Yum!

A few things I did differently on the cake than the tutorials:
1. I made 1.5 times the amount of frosting
2. I only made two layers (using 9 inch pans) so baking time increased approximately 10 minutes
3. I added gel coloring to the frosting