A Very Veggie Birthday

Well, our little girl has completed her second trip around the sun. Maggie turned 2 years old on Sunday. I'm sure everyone says this about their kids, but she has changed SO MUCH this year! Maggie's favorite thing in the world is watching "Bob" on a daily basis (she also likes "M's," her words for M&Ms, any other form of candy, and I like to think Mommy and Daddy, but I think Bob still wins out). We own 3 Veggie Tales DVDs and she gets to pick one to watch every afternoon after her nap. So it seemed only logical that her birthday would have a Veggie Tales theme. I use the term theme loosely. Here in Kenya, it's not like I can run to the party store and pick out cups, plates, and wall hangings in a given genre. So, when I say theme, I mean "birthday cake."

My disclaimer is that I have no formal cake decorator training. I never made cakes before I came to Kenya, and I almost never make them here. I did try my hand at a 2 layer birthday cake for Mags last year, which was sort of sloped and needed a lot of frosting to hold it together...I'm not sure why I thought that this qualified me to be able to make a themed cake for my daughter's second birthday, but I jumped in with both feet.

Using some ideas online, I decided to make Bob as an 8 inch round yellow cake, and Larry as a 9x13 chocolate cake and cut off the edges. Some of the misadventures included forgetting the baking powder in the yellow cake until it had been in the oven for 10 minutes, and the chocolate cake sticking to the pan when I flipped it onto the cookie sheet to cool (and then sticking to the cookie sheet when I flipped it back over onto the foil-covered cardboard I put the cakes on. Again, lots of frosting has the ability to hold cakes together. And I have no access to decorator frosting, so decided to just put the facial features on construction paper and lay them on the cakes. But here is the finished product:

Not bad, huh? It was all worth it when I put Mags up next to the cake and she recognized the characters, exclaiming, "Bob! Cake!" We had about 20 people over for the party (meaning, come and eat some cake), and they all watched as Maggie tried to blow out the 2 candles. This was unsuccessful, despite Eric practicing the candle blowing with her earlier in the day, so I stepped in to help.
This is what happened (also note that only one candle was blown out by me):
Oh, the danger of construction paper faces. No one seemed too traumatized, though, and there were no tears, and the cakes didn't taste too bad.
Happy Birthday, Maggie!