Everyone Loves Elmo, Well...Almost

Today our family is heading over to Noah C.'s to celebrate his 2nd birthday. While chatting it up with his mommy (aka Cindy) I found out she was considering making Noah's Elmo cake.

After talking for a few I decided I would really like to take the famous red head on since we're obviously related (Why is it everyone assumes all red heads are related?! I'll save that rant for another post).

This afternoon Elmo went under construction.

I started out with a basic 9x13 pan and standard white cake mix (add 1 tsp almond extract). I took a second mix and filled a 8" round pan and used up the remaining batter with 16 cupcakes.

Since the round pan is going to be Elmo's head I decided to add a little red food coloring to the batter. Apparently Elmo's innards are pink in my brain.

I was explaining to Graham what I was doing when he started telling me how much he hate's Elmo's voice and really wishes Elmo was an elephant that couldn't talk (?). He said he wished Elmo were real so he could punch him in the face...twice. Wow, cute little kid with some aggression issues. We'll decide not to explore the red headed link and not dive into his aggression being indirectly directed towards the real red head in his life.

Once the cakes were baked I immediately froze them on a flat stone. Once frozen I shaped the round cake by cutting out one piece and then laying it on the opposite side as a guide and cutting the same shape.
I used a thin layer of decorators icing to coat the entire rectangle cake and then place the round cake (Elmo's face) on the right side at a slight angle.
I used a paring knife to score where Elmo's mouth and nose should be so I could star out the red around it.
I decided to make his eyes "3D" by taking two of the cupcakes and cutting the bottom half off and placing them at the top of his head (the round cake).
You'll have to forgive the color of his nose since I didn't have orange or yellow food coloring. I took a little brown and mixed a tad of red and ended up with a beige nose. The boys felt it necessary to point that out immediately.


I have had difficulty in the past coming up with a true black but this time I made the icing brown first and then added the black coloring and I finally achieved BLACK! YAY. I made a quick dot for each pupil and then filled in his mouth.


The reason for sitting Elmo off to the right was so I could put the birthday boy's name on the cake.

Happy Birthday NOAH!! I hope Elmo tastes as good as he looks :)