McKenna's Dolphin Cake

Cakes are just fun - One of Andersen's friends was having a birthday recently and we decided that part of our gift to her would be to make her a cake. She is also a Facebook Friend and one of my favorite Girl Scouts.......well former Girl Scouts (hint hint that I want her to rejoin if she reads this). So Miss McKenna's sees any cakes that I post - and she asked for me to create her a cake. This is where we started.....

A nice White Cake with a Chocolate Buttercream Icing........yummie!!! The baking was from scratch. I think I have mentioned that I am still on the search for a delicious White Cake recipe. Well, still kinda on the search. This was good, but baked out a bit dry.....and I underbaked it. Plus - honestly I should have known when they didn't instruct me to separate the whites from the yolks. No respectable white cake has yolks in it.

What surprised me was her theme. She is a sporty girl and I honestly thought she would request Soccer, Softball, Basketball........something.......but she has an Ocean Love side and she actually picked......Dolphins and the beach. Having only 1 day to create this I went with simple.

Ocean Water looking fondant.......which I must say I am getting better at placing over the top of the cake. I am also beginning to understand my fondant recipe better. If I follow the recipe exactly I believe I am using too much powdered sugar and the fondant gets too dry. Tweaking is an art and sometimes can take me forever to wrap my head around.

Tah Dah - just a tiny bunch of fondant there on the edge of one side. Better right? I am getting there - slowly but surely.

Added a little sea life.......I didn't have the time to create schools of fish like I wanted to add in - a day in the life of a mom with 3 kids doesn't always allow extra creative opportunity. But I did get a few "Star" fish - get it?? and some seaweed and such.

The most important part of the cake of course were Dolphins - and they made there way in. However, Andersen and I thought that it was equally important to make a McKenna for her cake......
So that is just what I did. McKenna topped her cake laying on the beach.

There was also a beach umbrella - although it was made and set to dry for them. We delivered it the night before the party in hopes that the umbrella would be set enough for them to put it over fondant McKenna right before the party. That hope wasn't realized. The umbrella crumbled a bit when they pulled it off the form - so the girls ate it. Still a Win Win I suppose if you can eat your mistakes!