Birthday cake decisions

My daughter’s 2nd birthday is coming up next month and I need to make some decisions about her birthday cake. Last year I made and Owl and Pussycat cake based on an illustration by Laila Hills Illustration and design which I was really pleased with. It took me 3 days (bearing in mind I had 2 kiddywinks to look after and was chocolate cake with vanilla cupcakes on the bottom tier.

It was easy to decide on a theme last year as she didn’t have many opinions back then. This year she is much more her own person and I have been trying to think what her favourite things are so that I can choose a theme for the cake. The problem I’ve found is that I’m actually not sure what she likes. This sounds dreadful but we spend most of our time doing things my 3 year old likes. We look at trains and play Thomas the tank engine (his favourite thing), we watch Abney and Teal because he’s obsessed with it and we generally do what he wants to do because he is able to talk to us clearly. We certainly don’t ignore our daughter, but the truth is she generally wants to do what her big brother is doing because it’s grown up and exciting.

For her brother’s birthday last year I made a James the red engine cake and she loved it but I just can’t bring myself to make a “boy” cake for her, so after much thought the two things I have come up with that she likes are butterflies (she loves her “fwy shoes”) and princess Ariel from Disney’s The little mermaid.

I like the idea of an Ariel theme – we could do sea themed biscuits etc. but I’m not sure because I bought a lot of her presents in the sales after Christmas and they are almost all Cinderella themed. Now I could go OTT and do a cinderella cake but I’m not sure I’m up to making glass shoes and mice, which brings me back to butterflies.

Butterfly Cupcakes I’ve made butterflies before, I put them on cupcakes I made for a charity event and on the 5th anniversary cake I made for our Centre parcs trip so I’m confident I could do I good Job. I like the idea of a 2 tier cake that looks like a garden with butterflies landing on the flowers. I need to make a decision soon so I can check I have all the gel colours and cake tins I need but I keep going back and forth – help!