The Sweet Life -Cakes and More!: triple chocolate

The daughter of my best friend had her first birthday party this weekend. Naturally I said yes when my bff asked me to make her daughter's birthday cake. Once she told me that she had decided on an Elmo theme, I spent an obscene amount of time online searching for some inspirational photos on what to make. I finally decided to purchase an Elmo pan from Wilton and put it on a sheet cake to make sure that it would feed everyone at the party.

For weeks I was so excited about making this cake- I couldn't wait to get started! I wanted to make sure that everything would be perfect. That turned out to be much harder than I thought since I hurt my left hand (I'm left handed) the weekend before the party.

The entire week before the party I worried about how I would decorate these cakes with a left hand that I could hardly move and that was very swollen. What did I do to it? Who knows! When I realized that I couldn't hold my coffee mug, I began to wonder if I had broken it! I iced it practically every second of the day in hopes that the pain would just magically go away before I started baking. Wishful thinking that unfortunately didn't work!

I finally decided to just start baking when I realized that my hand wasn't going to get much better. Needless to say, piping individual starts to color in Elmo's face was torture! I finally got it done in an amount of time that I am embarrassed to even type out. The sheet cake was a lot better since there wasn't too much detail that I was planning on adding.... although it still took me longer than expected.

The day of the party finally arrived and I was excited to have finished the cake! I drove into the city and the terror started. You don't realize how badly city drivers are until you have a stacked cake and cupcakes in your trunk! Thankfully, the cake and I made it to the party in one piece, but we had a few close calls and a few choice words on my part along the way!

So here is the cake! Elmo was a confetti cake iced in a vanilla buttercream. The sheet cake underneath was a triple chocolate chocolate chip (chocolate overload? ;-)) filled with banana filling on one half and strawberry whipped cream on the other.