How to Make a "Cake Boss" Birthday Party

My lovely daughter turned 12 yesterday and I was exhausted! The previous week was spent planning her wonderful yet time intensive Cake Boss birthday party.  If some of you don't know, "Cake Boss" is a funny and quirky show on TLC that highlights the life and business of baker Buddy Valastro in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Carlo's Bake Shop produces beautiful special event cakes and a huge variety of decadent desserts and pastries.  As well, the cast of characters is quite entertaining.  About every single family member is involved in the business - they fight, laugh, cry and in general really enjoy each other.  My daughter is a dedicated viewer.

When Eva found a Cake Boss birthday party online I couldn't deny her.  Even I dreamed of being a guest at this sweet and fun event.  The major components of this party came from the Hostess with the Mostess Blog.  The party they produced probably took 5 times as many hours and dollars than I spent, so I decided to indulge Eva on a modified level.

I did spend hours on this party and took out my shoulders with rolling fondant for days on end. However, the results were amazing.  Enjoy this picture gallery with short explanations on how I produced each aspect of the party.

The girls started out by making these cupcake paper flowers to decorate their aprons (DIY for cupcake liner flowers). I bought all of the cupcake liners at Michael's and found some beautiful jewels to adorn them in the 50 cent section!  Attach the flower with a hot glue gun or fabric glue.

Next, I found a cute image on the computer that said "I'm the Boss" and printed the logo on transfer paper to iron onto the aprons.  The paper is also found at Michael's (most everything I bought was from Michael's including aprons) and is super easy to use.  Just follow directions on the package because you must print the mirror image of what you are ironing on.

We had 10 guests so I produced this many cakes for each girl to decorate.  I used a basic yellow cake mix with a 6" and 4" pan for the tier and placed them on an 8" cake board.  Next I "dirty iced" the cake with a simple buttercream.

I then purchased Wilton's White Fondant and rolled and covered all the cakes...this is when the shoulder pain started :)

In order to hide the seams of the fondant, I piped on pretty pink buttercream rosettes to cover any small mistakes.

We chose a pastel color theme since it's close to Easter and many of the candies for sale are in these spring like colors.  I placed colored decorating icing in zip lock bags and simply cut off the tip for piping. An array of decorations and candy were available so each girl could express they're creativity!

The result was a feast for the eyes.  The girls had even more fun listening to Top 40 music while they decorated, sang and danced.

After we finished decorating, Eva opened presents and then we sat down to birthday ice cream sundaes (we were caked out), homemade popcorn and recorded episodes of the "Cake Boss".

We finished up the afternoon with fun party favors.  Each girl got to take home they're cake, a raspberry sorbet hand sanitizer from Bath and Body, cupcake bath fizzies from Michael's (only 50 cents each) a Hershey Kiss flower, a selection of lollipops from our topiary and their aprons.

For the Hershey Kiss Flowers we attached kisses to small foam balls with hot glue and stuck in a lollipop stick and glued on a pretty pink bow.

For the topiary we bought a 6" foam ball and about 4 bags of Dum Dum lollipops and simply stuck them in side by side.  I used a thick wooden dowel to hold up the heavy circle and wedged it into foam surrounded by packed newspaper to hold it straight.

All of our "bosses" had a great time!  If you have any questions regarding the party please leave me a comment or send an email to eahughes68@gmail.com.