Happy Birthday, James! + a Mario Cake

My baby is 4 today.  I conducted a little interview with him this morning in between his eating breakfast and counting his birthday money.

I downloaded the template above from Squijoo if anyone else has Photoshop and has a child's birthday coming up.

It should come as no surprise that we're having a Mario party today.  My mom came up yesterday to bake James' cake.  Ella drew some designs for our cake-decorating inspiration.

I was really glad to have an expert there and to learn a few tips.

Did I mention that Ella lost yet ANOTHER top tooth last week?  Look at that smile.

She loves to help in the kitchen.  We decided on a two-layer square cake just for fun, and Debbo made a cream filling.  I'm looking forward to trying it tonight.

 The nerve-wracking part is always putting those big layers together. 

Whew!  We made it.  Ella said it looked like a giant Oreo.  

Then it was time to make it look like the inside of a Mario game.  Most of the inspiration cakes I found online used fondant, which we're not huge fans of the taste of, so we went with my Mom's homemade frosting instead.  She's a champion at smoothing it out.  Debbo is, however, going to experiment with some fondant made from marshmallows, so maybe we'll have that in our decorating arsenal one day.

I bought these edible decorating paper sheets at Wal-mart, which Debbo turned into a castle. Thanks to the store of human knowledge on Google, we were able to make brown food coloring from equal parts red, yellow, and blue (just in case you ever need to know), which Mom applied with a Q-tip.

I found these Mario figures to make the cake.  Literally.

I thought it turned out really cute.  Best of all, James thinks it's "a really cool cake," and he keeps opening  the refrigerator to look at it.  I just need to add some doors to the castle today...

I think Mario and Luigi are going to finish this level with flying colors.  Or fireworks.  Lots of fireworks.