Smash Cake

For the Goose's first birthday, I just HAD to bake up the oh so trendy smash cake. Except I wanted the Goose's to have a little extra something. So I decided to make it an ombre layer cake.

It was actually not has horrific as I expected it to be, though took some creativity considering I have none of the proper baking tools besides the pans themselves (and even those weren't exactly right).
I try to make things from scratch, but cakes is not one of those things. Good ole Betty Crocker to the rescue. I chose white cake mix, so the colors would show best. I plucked out my blue Wilton gel icing dye, mixed the boxed cake according to the directions, separated two boxes worth into 5 bowls. I used more and more dye as I went from batch to batch to made the colors more and more saturated. Here's the creative part: I was making a mini cake aka a smash cake. So the cake was not going to be full size. But I only have full cake size pans (9" diameter?). So I put on my thinking cap, and got to searching. And I found an old thingamajig that my mom gave to me. Naturally, I don't have a pic of it. Essentially, it looked like a bullseye target contraption thingy that you placed inside a regular cake pan for checkerboard cake making - I think. The outer ring was the perfect size for my mini smash cake, and the inner ring wasn't as deep so it would only leave an indent. I know I'm not describing this well, so I will just give you a pic of the cake layers so you can try to imagine what I'm talking about (or maybe you are a baker and this thingamajig I'm talking about is something your very familiar with...who knows).

If you understand what I'm talking about or not, doesn't matter. Here's my 5 layers. Some were thicker than others, so I cut them down (not very well, obvi).

From here on out it was easy as pie...er...cake. Simple whipped white frosting in between layers...

Finished it up with whipped white frosting on the outside and handed it over for demolition.

Looking back, the ombre layers were so unneccesary. He wasn't a huge "smasher". And the little he did smash didn't really show the layers. I should have realized that an ombre layer cake is probably best when being cut to see the layers...not smashed. Oh well, I still loved that cake, and I know the Goose loved it!