welcome to the circus!

some of y’all may or may not know that i love to bake. have since i was a wee little thing. i have an obsession with cupcake liners, i need to take a picture of my cabinet (yes, i have an entire bottom portion of a cabinet full of just liners) so you can see what i am talking about. it’s actually kind of sick, like i need to seek help, or maybe my vendor needs to tell me to calm down on the pretty papers. i took a hiatus when we were out of the house for obvious reasons and started accepting cupcake orders again a few weeks ago. since i opened the shop back up i have had an order every weekend. i wish i could keep it this way for a while. when a girl i grew-up with was looking for a baker for her daughter’s upcoming circus themed first birthday i jumped at the opportunity and we started brainstorming. i have to admit that the control freak in me loves when clients allow me to guide them through what works vs. doesn’t work. i had a vision of sweet leila’s smash cake but i knew that would require me to dust off my cricut cake machine box that had been tucked away on one of our garage shelves since getting it for Christmas last year. i watched all the videos last week and bit the bullet, plugged it in, colored and rolled some gumpaste and hit cut. the first few attempts were frustrating but once my machine and i became buddy-buddies she cut like a charm or maybe she was happy the curse words stopped flying her way? either way, my smash cake came into fruition and it was the easiest cake i have ever, read ever frosted. i was singing, “da nunna-nunna-nunna-da-nunna-nunna-na!” i guess this stemmed from hubby crossing the border, but i was giddy and truly happy to be baking. i wasn’t stressed, thank god and actually having fun. i guess my hiatus was worth it, because a year ago, i would have thought of this order as “work” vs. “fun”.

welcome to the circus – smash cake

i was too proud not to take a picture with my cake. i know cheesy. but whatevs.

the table

the flavors chosen by the client were:

princess cake with vanilla cream cheese

red velvet with milk chocolate buttercream (this was a first time flavor combo for me. usually everyone wants cream cheese, it was pretty good!)

and

devils food with oreo buttercream

if anyone is considering this theme for a party it was so cute! there was a gourmet hot dog cart with a popcorn machine, shaved ice station, cocktail station with adorable goblets, the centerpieces were large plastic popcorn tubs with shooting stars, clown sunglasses, clown noses and the jumpy was literally the size of my house, no joke. the favors were in gable boxes, circus themed of course! and there was a ridiculously cute sign out front that directed the guests to all the circus fun (no pic because the hot dog dude’s truck was in front of it when i left). the only thing missing for me was a cotton candy machine!