Panda Cake and Cupcakes

My friend was celebrating her daughter's 1st birthday with a panda-themed party. She wanted a cake, a smash cake and some cupcakes, with green incorporated into the design and minimal fondant. She gave me a budget and basically left everything else up to me! Sweet.I decided to go with a pink and green colour scheme, like on the invitation card. 

Panda Party Cakes & Cupcakes!

The main cake is an 8" cake with strawberry and vanilla cake layers, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream dyed a light shade of green using Americolour Electric Green. I thought it would be a nice surprise to have the pink and white layers inside a green cake. 

Panda-themed birthday cake

A closer look at the fondant Panda family

I made a panda family out of fondant to top the cake, with the baby panda in pink diapers and holding a pink balloon with a number 1 on it. I just love figurines holding "balloons", like this elephant cake, and this elephant cake, and this elephant cake! Wait, wait, why always elephants?? I dunno. But this time, it's a panda, thank goodness. Haaa.

view from the side

Instead of making bamboo out of fondant, I chose to use a few Picolo wafter roll biscuits to place around the cake. Nobody really eats fondant, but most people like these crunchy biscuits. Green tea flavour looks like bamboo, right?

looks like bamboo?

For the smash cake, I went with a 5" vanilla butter cake, filled with vanilla bean crème Mousseline and frosted with pink vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I went with a simple, but fun vertical ruffle design, piped using tip no. 104. I like this shade of pink much better than this first vertical ruffle cake I did. And the ruffles came out much neater too. I lightly indented some lines, evenly spaced around the cake to use as a guide to pipe even-sized ruffles, something I didn't do the last time. It helped a lot!

one row of ruffles done, a few more to go!

To top the smash cake, I made another baby panda fondant figurine, a little fondant gift box and a green & white striped fancy fondant number 1, with a tiny daisy flower embellishment. I also added a paper bunting topper with the birthday girl's name on it, and used more Picolo wafter roll biscuits to hold the bunting up, instead of paper straws like with this cake. I just made a notch at the top of the biscuits so that the string would hold in place. Brilliant, right? ;)

baby panda smash cake

For the cupcakes, I went with two flavours: egg-free chocolate cupcakes & vanilla butter cupcakes, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I piped light green buttercream swirls on top of the chocolate cupcakes using a 1M piping tip, some with a traditional swirl, and the rest with a rose swirl. 

traditional swirl frosting

frosting piped with a  1M tip

rose swirl frosting

I decorated the vanilla cupcakes with more pink buttercream ruffles. I didn't really have a  design in mind and just piped the ruffles on in concentric circles. I to ask my mother in law if they looked alright, and she said they looked pretty, so I went with it. Haha.

ruffly pink buttercream frosting

I had made mini fondant panda figurines, some number ones and some daisies to top the cupcakes in advance. I didn't really count how many of each toppers I should have made to go with the right number of cupcakes I frosted... and miraculously, I had the exact amount of fondant pandas for the pink cupcakes, the right amount of number 1s for the traditionally frosted green cupcakes, and just short of one daisy for the rose swirl cupcakes! I promise to count next time. 

fondant cake and cupcake toppers

The panda party was held at Ryhthm in Me. I was looking forward to this party cuz my kids have been going to one indoor playground party after another, so this party would be a refreshing change! The party promised music and singing and dancing. And it was SO fun. My kids had a grand time banging on bongo drums, dancing to disco beats with glow sticks and disco lights, singing songs like Let It Go and London Bridge as the party host played music on the piano. Definitely a fun place to hold a party for kids of all ages. 

Panda-themed dessert table

A simple dessert table was already set up by the Ryhthm in Me team when I arrived at the party. Naturally I placed the cake on the elevated surface, and then randomly arranged the cupcakes around the table, with the smash cake front and centre. I took about half an hour to finish putting all the toppers on the cakes and cupcakes (I used toothpicks to prop up the pandas & wooden skewers to hold up the wafter biscuits for the paper bunting). Thankfully, the my three monsters were occupied by the fun, musical activities going on inside the studios to notice that I was missing.

cute panda on pink buttercream ruffles

love the cute l'il daisy embellishment on this no. 1

daisy flower atop a rose-swirl cupcake

Baby Clara was a little apprehensive about smashing her panda smash cake! After touching the buttercream a little bit, she kind of lost interest, and even looked slightly disturbed at her buttercream-covered hand! Too cute! 

panda smash cake & matching panda cupcakes

And then, it was truly panda-monium as the kids were served their lunch and the cakes were cut distributed. My kids made sure to grab a slice of the pink and white panda cake, and many of the guests wiped the cream off of the pandas topping their cupcakes cuz they wanted to take them home as souvenirs! 

pink and white cake layers

Happy 1st Birthday to sweet baby Clara! Thanks for having us celebrate your special day with you!

Happy 1st Birthday, Clara!