happy birthday dear lila

In honor of Lila's birthday this week I dug up some photos of her cute 4th birthday party. Lauren found this robot invitation and Lila loved it, so that was the start of the theme. Our friend Jodi had just made robot collages with her kids so that became the activity for the party...perfect since art and crafts are among Lila's favorite pastimes.

Lauren asked me to help with the cake, knowing that I would enjoy the challenge. I have not made many sheet cakes over the years but Lauren and I talked a lot and decided that it made perfect sense for this party...Lauren wanted to invite a large group so a big cake was needed! For the design of the cake I turned to the card for inspiration. I ended up making a couple rectangular cakes and cutting them into geometric shapes to make a girl robot. One of the things that we loved about this idea was that we could designate different parts of the robot different flavors of cake and frosting. The legs were chocolate cake with a shiny ganache poured over it...a definite favorite with the adults at the party. The body of the robot was a vanilla cake with pink buttercream frosting. I used assorted candies and gumdrops for some simple embellishments.