Not OUR blogiversary, merrypad.com’s blogiversary. Since I’m a little baking nerd, I made a cake for my girl Emily’s 1 year blogiversary. Here’s the quick step by step.

Making a custom cake is SO EASY, people. I usually make them for my daughter and it’s always a huge hit, like a Wow Wow Wubbzy cake, and even if it flops, like the My Little Pony Rainbow Dash fail, it’s still fun. My point is, PLEASE stop going into the grocery store and ordering those airbrushed cakes that they jam plastic toys into. Also, stop just making those rectangular cakes. Make something different, come on, you can do it. And this is the most basic of custom cakes. It’s just going to be a simple shape cut out of a 9×13 cake.

Step 1 – Make a template
First thing you want to do is get a printout of the kind of cake you want to make at the proper size. You can put 2 9×13 cakes side by side and cut something out up to 13×18. Any combination is possible. You can find printable kid stuff at most kid sites like pbskids.org or nickjr.com. Print it out at work, or have your significant other print it out at work and you’re 1/4 of the way there.

I made Merrypad’s logo so luckily I could manipulate it to be the size I wanted it. since it was probably just us eating it I just went normal 9×13.

Step 2 – Prep the cake(s)
Make your cake and let it cool. Cold cake cuts WAY better so let it COOL thoroughly.

You know how after you bake a cake it has that humped top? Use a large serrated bread knife and saw the top off to make it a flat surface to work on. THEN flip the cake over so the bottom of the cake is the top and the flattened part is the bottom. Now you have a REALLY flat surface to work on.

Step 3 – Cut out your shape
Figure out if you need to cut your template into multiple pieces. In this case I just had to plop it on and start trimming. I use a sharp paring knife for most trimming.

The printout (someone needs a new ink cartridge) of the M teMMMplate. (see what I did there?)

Excuse the blue nail polish. My daughter painted my nails a couple nights before.

This is so simple.

Step 4 – Mix your colors
You need some good colors. Williams-Sonoma has some really potent colors called Williams-Sonoma Decorating Pastes that I use for all my cakes but I’m sure craft places have them too. Probably branded by the Ace of Cakes guy, Duff. He seems to be everywhere. Anyway, separate your frosting into as many containers as you need for all of your colors. I only needed three for my cake. UPDATE: (Now I swear by these Wilton dyes for tinting foods.)

Step 5 – Start with the background and work your way to the top
I’m not even going to get into fondant. That feels like cheating. Cut your template into the different pieces that you need to trace with your homemade piping bag and then carefully peel them up trying not to pull up the frosting below. Then you fill in the space with your piping bag and smooth it out with a spatula.

Tracing my paper cutout with the homemade piping bag.

WHAT? You don’t know what a homemade piping bag is? Mix the color, put it in a Ziploc bag, bite a little hole in the corner, and start drawing.

PRO TIP: To keep the putting-the-frosting-into-the-piping-bag process from getting messy, turn the bag inside out with your hand in there like you’re going to pick up dog poop, put a big glob of frosting in your hand with your spatula, and turn the bag right-side-out. There, neat and clean.

Step 6 – clean up around the cake

Okay, I didn’t clean up around this, but it’s done.

A personally made a cake that says, “I care about you enough to make a cake for you”.

Perfection

Awww, isn’t that sweet? Happy blogiversary, Emily.