A Sweet Sixteen Birthday Cake With SweetWorks

A Sweet Sixteen Birthday Cake With SweetWorks

Like most kids these days, my daughter has grown up with theme based birthday parties.  Over the years, there was a Rocking Horse, Elmo, Teletubbies, Blue’s Clues, Winnie the Pooh, Barbie, and many other popular children’s characters.  Back in those days, I worked, money was a little more free flowing, and cakes were store bought.  Then came my unexpected medical retirement, and I decided that it might be cheaper to make birthday cakes.

Of course, we didn’t simply bake a plain box mix and call it a day.  I taught my dear daughter how to use the various cookware we already owned to design and create custom cakes at home.  As with other home making lessons, the final presentation was taught.  She’s been taught to use the best dishes and linens we own to present goodies and to dress up the presentation area.  These things are  just as important as putting the effort into creating the cake.  Every birthday for your child is special, so show them how special they are to you by going that extra mile.

This was the year that my daughter started middle school.  She was ALL about the school mascot, Tigers.  Her party colors were black and orange with of course a Tiger theme.  This cake was three layers.  The paw, the top layer, was made of five separate mini cakes.  The main part of the paw was made using a mini heart pan and the toes were bite-sized cupcakes.  The peach frosting was supposed to be orange.  At least the candles and the J for her name turned out the right color.    But notice the presentation I talked about earlier?  We had a orange plastic tablecloth, placed black tissue paper in the center of the table, and threw some gold gift fluffy stuff  around.  Notice how it all shows through the glass cake plate?  It really helped tie it all together.

The following year, dear daughter searched the internet for months ahead of time for THE cake that she wanted me to create for her.  She couldn’t decide on a single cake that she wanted, so she picked a combination of cakes.  How in the world do I let her talk me into these things?  Oh yeah, she’s an only child  and it’s just the two of us!

Along came fifteen and she decided on a peace symbol theme.  Of course, it was up to mom to create a cake that matched the theme!  That was NOT a simple task.  A full post for the Peace Cake is promised, one day.

There’s a reason that I only create these cakes once a year.  It’s a SLOW, tedious process for me.  I’m also a perfectionist and must get EVERYTHING exactly like I want it or I will obsess over it until it is just that way!

As it neared this year’s birthday, I asked her what kind of theme she was interested in using.  She said that she wasn’t sure, but she knew that I would come up  with something fabulous to surprise her with.  I just shook my head and laughed.  She had already found candy pearls and wanted them on her cake, but the color choices were limited.  Later that same day we stumbled across a display of SweetWorks Celebration Pearls in our local grocery store.  We were immediately drawn to them because of the bright, popping colors, and shiny pearl finish.

As always, my daughter checked the ingredients to find out whether or not she was able to eat them.  To our surprise, we were thrilled to find that the Sweetworks Celebration Pearlswere free of Red Dye #40.  We continued checking labels and found that all of the colors she fell in love with were totally safe for her to consume.  The colors for her upcoming cake were decided based on the display in the store.  While checking for the dye, the label also caught my attention with the Gluten-Free stamp.  It’s a rare day we find treats that both of us can safely eat with no fear of our allergies causing us to be ill.

In true blogger fashion, I was sent a fabulous assortment of SweetWorks products to use and review while making my daughter’s Sweet Sixteen cake.  The colors were so fun and girly, perfect for a Sweet Sixteen cake!  The smallest pearls are solid sugar and I was afraid that they would be hard on my teeth when I bit into them.  To my surprise they weren’t nearly as hard as I expected, they were something like the consistency of a SweetTart or Smarties.  The Sixlets were a total surprise considering I hadn’t seen them since my own childhood, dawning their old school yellow, orange, red, purple, and green colored shells.  They were absolutely beautiful and of course they were soft chocolate filled.  The purple Sixlets pouch we received were in a coordinating flat finish, but the pearlized finish is available in a shaker jar.  Rounding out the set of the pearly assortment were the jawbreaker sized Gumballs.  Each package of Gumballs even had a slightly different flavor and scent.  My favorite was the pink, it was more fruity than the others, but all of them held their flavor for a quite some time.

In the center of the picture above are orange and yellow boxes of deliciousness from the Ovation line.  These boxes were lightweight, so I didn’t expect them to have much inside.  Was I ever surprised!  They were loaded with individually wrapped chocolate sticks.  Each one is about 1/4″ wide and about 4″ long, SweetWorks sent a Cappuccino as well as a Dulce de Leche for us to try.  I am NOT a coffee drinker of any sort, but was surprised when I really liked the Cappuccino.   There was absolutely no surprise that I fell in love with the  Dulce de Leche, since I love chocolate covered caramel so much.  The Ovation sticks almost melt in your mouth.  They are small and soft enough that we had no concerns with giving them to our friend’s two year old.  Of course, she took one look at the goody bags we created with the Sixlets, Gumballs, and Ovation Sticks and started begging for “Canny!”  That’s “Candy” just in case you couldn’t figure it out. 

My daughter still didn’t give me much guidance in the creation of her cake, other than selecting the colors above and that she wanted a Funfetti cake mix.  Thankfully, she reminded me that we needed two boxes of cake mix and two cans of frosting, so that we didn’t chance running short like we had in the past.    She did specify that she wanted all of the Sixlets mixed together, instead of having separate rows of the individual colors..  As I created the cake, she was excited to see it come together.  So, as usual, I made it up as I went.  I wanted to use the Gumballs and decided they would be cute on top with the candles and could help support them, since mine always seem to fall over.  There is LOTS of room for improvement, but I think I did a pretty good job on my daughter’s Sweet Sixteen Birthday Cake thanks to SweetWorks!

We also made one other treat using the Celebration Pearls.  We like to use our cinnamon rolls to create holiday themed cinnamon rolls.  On Christmas morning, we made a Christmas tree.  We added a little green dye to the icing  and  topped it with the white and pink pearls.  It was a perfect start for our day!

**Compensation for this review was provided with the shown products.  Although this is a compensated review, all opinions are my own.**