The First Birthday Frog Cake

If you are curious about why I chose to bake a frog cake {not that any of us have anything against frogs}, the reason is: our son O. crawls like a frog. He does this very efficiently, so that he rarely bothers to crawl in the standard fashion, even though he has proven himself capable. When Si was in the hospital, a mother of six dropped off a meal. When she saw O. crawling {or hopping, more like it} she stared at him for a while, and then said that she had six daughters, none of whom had ever crawled like that.

Indeed.

He is his own person, this is for sure. All other babies in our family walked at the age of 10 months, but he likes to hop around the house, even now.

All of this is to say that a frog cake was most definitely in order.

As is my tradition, I’ll show the steps for making this cake, which is a combination of a number of cakes I saw pictured on the Internet when I googled “frog cake” last week.

In order to recreate this cake you will need to double your standard cake recipe. Bake two standard size cupcakes, one 8-inch round cake, and pour the remaining batter into a 9×13 rectangular pan, which will make a fairly tall base, as these things go.

You will also want to double your standard frosting recipe. Take out about half, and tint it an appropriate shade of blue for a pond. I used a pale blue and added in a bit of green to give it some depth as I didn’t want to go out and buy a special blue for this occasion.

Frost the base blue, then stack on the round cake off-center.

I’d like to take a moment to thank my sponsor, Josiah, for doing most of the frosting job this time around. I was still sick, and, in order to save time and get to bed earlier, Si graciously frosted while I mixed up the other colors. Not every husband will do this sort of thing; God has been gracious to me.

That round cake is going to be your frog’s head. You’ll want to grab about half of your remaining frosting and tint it a very bright green. If you make a lot of cakes, it is worth it to invest in a couple shades of green. I use tons of green for some reason.

After this, take the remaining frosting and divide it. You will keep a third and leave it white, and take the other two-thirds and tint it green. I used a darker green color so that the leaves weren’t the same color as the frog.

Take the two cupcakes, and slice a portion off of the side {about a third}. You will then lay them on their sides to make giant frog eyes. Frost the front of the eyes white, and the backs {think eyelids here} green like the body of the frog.

Using a leaf tip, add some “pond foliage” around the base.

Plain brown M&Ms for eyes, green peanut M&Ms for toes!

Using a star tip, add a few simple flowers here and there.

If you are like me, you are unpracticed at adding a message. Do it anyhow. Make sure you work in the word “hoppy.”

“Hoppy 1st”

Now try to keep the 2-year-old from digging in
before the party starts!