Brody's Birthday Cake

For weeks leading up to Brody's birthday I would ask him what he wanted for his birthday. The only thing he would say was cupcakes. Cupcakes? Really? SWEET! That is SO easy. But of course, about a week after saying this he got a wild hair and decided that he wanted a tractor cake. What? Where in the world did you get the idea for a tractor cake?

I am not one of those "creative" moms. I can't just come up with cute ideas off the top of my head. I'm pretty good at copying other "creative" mom's ideas, so I turned to the internet and began scouring page after page for any ideas that I could find. I mostly could only find farm scenes with toy tractors placed on top, or tractor cakes made from tractor cake pans. I didn't want the farm scene because I don't think that's what Brody had in mind (although that would have probably been the easiest solution), and I didn't want to have to order a cake pan and pay for it plus the shipping. I also felt that if I used a cake pan I was kinda cheating. I really was hoping I could figure out how to cut up a sheet cake or something to form the tractor, but without someone else doing it and showing me EXACT instructions I didn't think my very limited skills could accomplish that alone. Then I remembered seeing a John Deere cake pan at one of our local stores about a year ago, and knew it was a long shot, but I thought I'd check there. They didn't have it. BUT they did have a different tractor cake pan! It was way cuter than the one I remembered seeing before AND because it was a discontinued item I got it cheaper than the original price!

Cake pan found and bought.....now how the heck am I going to ice this baby? Once again, turned to the internet for some help. I couldn't find any iced tractor cakes made from the same pan I had, but I looked at lots of others to get a general idea. I was all prepared for a green tractor when Brody then specified he wanted a RED tractor cake. Agh! Who does he think I am? The cake boss?

I found some stuff that was supposed to turn my white icing red and not pink, and also not make it runny. I used every single drop of that dye and the icing still wasn't as red as I had hoped, but I was going to make do anyway.

Wouldn't you know that because of it being August and the weather is pretty warm, my icing was melting off the cake! I was having to put it in the fridge, take it out, ice a little bit, and put it back in to harden a little more. My "glass is half full" attitude was quickly turning into a "glass is half empty" attitude, and when I looked at my hands and saw that they were stained a bright (very bright) pink from the icing, it didn't get any better.

Finally, after a few hours of stressing and swearing I would never make a cake again (that is until 3 weeks from now when Ry turns 1) I finished! It wasn't perfect, but it still ended up pretty dang cute.

Brody was happy. He thought it was awesome and couldn't wait to have candles in it the next day so he could "bwow the fire out!"