Hot Air Balloons Birthday Cakes

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Today I'm sharing a couple of my favorite Hot Air Balloons Birthday Cakes. These were made years apart, but when I looked back at the pictures and similarities, I knew I wanted to share them together!

This weekeend has been a doozy and it's not even over yet. My first cake out the door was a small smash cake for a photo shoot. It was small and easy enough - except I had to get crafty to make the topper.

Paper, scissors, string, glue, markers... not exactly my tools of choice 🙂 I really don't mind - it was fun. But definitely out of my cakey comfort zone. Then for today, I had this Unicorns & Rainbows Cake and smash cake.

That cake ended up being so hard. I'm not sure what was going on, but my fondant was not cooperating at all. I feel like it probably had a lot to do with the insane heat and humidity going on the past few days.

I covered the cake and spent around 2 hours decorating it. Only to have it all start to droop and sag so I had to tear it all off and start again. The second time I didnt' finish until after 4am.

Then when I got up this morning, just a few hours later, it had sagged again. I almost never have issues like this and it killed me. I cried. I called friends. I went back and forth a million times and still had no good fix.

In the end, because I didn't feel good about putting out a cake that I wasn't proud of, I called the client and explained. After sending a picture, she wasn't nearly as upset as I was. She just asked that I add a few more flowers or a cloud or two to cover the problems. So I did and it wasn't so bad.

Anyway... I have one more cake for Sunday afternoon, but for now, I want to sit and write.

I haven't written any this week and gosh, I miss it. So, I'm going to tell you about my Hot Air Balloons Birthday Cake from last weekend, along with one I did a few years ago:

Hot Air Balloons Birthday Cakes

First up - the cake I did back in 2016. I've mentioned before here that in a nearby town, there's the annual Great Mississippi River Balloon Races. And again, this cake was made in October around the time of that event.

Here's what I can tell you about this cake 🙂 It was 5" and 7" round tiers (3 layers on the bottom), baked in my favorite Magic Line pans. The cake was vanilla cake filled and frosted with vanilla buttercream.

I covered and decorated it with homemade marshmallow fondant. Back when I did this cake, I hand cut the balloons but now I use a hot air balloon cookie cutter. Here are some other tools I used:

Other tools & details:

His name was made with these Clickstix cutters.
The bunting was cut out with these small triangle (bunting) cutters.
I used my extruder to make the ropes.
The birds (on the sides) were cut out with the smaller of these cutters.
I used an edible food marker to dot the eyes.
Cloud cutters were used for the clouds (duh 😉 ).
The "1" was cut with a cutter similiar to this and I attached it to a skewer with melted chocolate to make it stand.
I used the same skewers and this twine for the topper.
Borders were made using my favorite silicone pearl molds.
I covered the board with glitter paper then wrapped with ribbon - tutorial here.

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Now... let's talk about the more girly version of a Hot Air Ballon Cake I did this past weekend!

I used so many of the same tools and methods - just different colors and a little bit more of a feminine touch.

For the bunting on the top tier, I used the same cutters as mentioned above, and I used a food marker to write "Happy Birthday" on the flags. The ropes were done with white fondant, then I painted them gold with a mixture of Imperial Gold Luster Dust and Lemon Extract.

I used homemade marshmallow fondant for the pink tier and Baby Blue Satin Ice for the bottom tier. I also used a variety of tiny flower cutters and gold pearls for the centers. For the larger centers, I used homemade marshmallow fondant then painted them gold with the same mixture as above.

This cake was also 5" and 7" tiers (3 layers on bottom). It was Wedding Cake with rainbow jimmies... Confetti Cake! I filled and frosted it with vanilla buttercream.

More details:

The bunting was cut out with these small triangle (bunting) cutters.
I used my extruder to make the ropes.
I used an edible food marker to write "Happy Birthday"
Cloud cutters were used for the clouds.
The "1" was cut with a cutter similiar to this and I attached it to a skewer with melted chocolate to make it stand.
Borders were made using my favorite silicone pearl molds.
I covered the board with glitter paper then wrapped with ribbon - tutorial here.