Giraffe cake adventure

Wil loves giraffes. This year for his birthday, he wanted a giraffe cake. As any good parent would, I searched online for a giraffe cake pan.

Did you know giraffe cake pans are hard to find? There is the Wilton generic animal face pan, which is discontinued, but still to be found on eBay. And you can download directions on how to decorate it as just about any animal, including giraffes.

But that wasn't good enough. Because Wil saw a full body giraffe cake pan and wanted that. So I ordered it.

Imagine my surprise when I saw how tiny the pan is.

Yep, I didn't read the description thoroughly. The cake pan is not much bigger than a cupcake. 

On to plan B. What can you do when you realize your cake pan is not right and the birthday party is in less than a week? Well, I could have ordered something else online and paid for express shipping. But I decided to be Creative!

What did I come up with, you ask? Cupcake giraffes. 

Cupcake giraffes.

The birthday boy loves them. He especially loves that there are two! And that he gets a tiny giraffe cake all to himself while the rest of us have cupcakes.

Decorating the giraffes was pretty easy. I used some yellow dye left over from a previous Wilton cake I did for the frosting. Chris added cinnamon spots because he mastered the shaking technique.  We lined them up in vaguely giraffe shape. The long necks are the key.

Will they win any decorating contests? Nope. But they won the only one that counts. I have a happy kid.

Oh, and the cake is spice cake with cream cheese frosting, which we chose as Wil's special cake for his first birthday and have done ever since. It's a nice fall cake. (Sam gets strawberry cake since that's a nice summer cake and he loves strawberries.)