My Girl's Birthday Cake - Butterfly Garden Cake & Cookies

When Sarah and I first began talking about her birthday cake this year, she mentioned a Cinderella cake. I have to admit I wasn't excited. We've done the princess party and castle cake... twice. My first thought, honestly, was, "Not again."

Then, out of nowhere she piped up with, "OH wait. I want it to have butterflies. Flowers and butterflies."

This was a theme I could get with.

I immediately began to design it in my head and I have to admit, I'm a little amazed that it came out so close to how I imagined it.



I iced the cake with blue buttercream and used blue marshmallow fondant to cover it. The flowers are a combination of free-hand, cookie cutter, and templates made by my Cricut and are cut out of Wilton fondant (neon colors). The grass and stems/leaves are piped buttercream & royal icing.



The cake is chocolate and she decided that she wanted a chocolate filling between the layers.

I already had some chocolate ganache leftover in my fridge from a while back that I had been looking for a reason to use up. I used some of it to mix with the royal icing to do the bodies of the butterflies.
Then, I mixed what was left of that together with some butter cream and did a base for my filling, then added the rest of the ganache on top of that before adding my second layer. Oh my... it was heaven.


The butterfly cookies on top led us to decide that making coordinating cookies to send home as party favors would be a good idea.






Who needs goody bags when there are cookies to be had, right?

And I'll toot my horn and say that it all tasted good. The chocolate cake was all gone except for one little slice that we took home and shared. But that's the way I like it.

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Edited on 7/16/09:
I have added this cake to the Birthday Cake Roudup over at Life as Mom.