Goodnight Moon First Birthday Cake

This book image can be used under fair use copyright laws. This post was neither sponsored nor affiliated with the book Goodnight Moon. 

This was a commission from a friend of mine for her son's first birthday, but it didn't quite end up as originally planned. The plan was to make a large cake enough for around 30 people. But the baby's mother, my friend, injured herself and eventually decided to cancel the party. I decided I really wanted to make her the cake anyway as a surprise. I just changed it from the planned 10 inch square cake to a 6 inch square cake just for the family.

Then came the week of the birthday, and I got sick. Lost my voice, coughing, congested, the whole 9 yards. I still really wanted to make the cake, so I made the cake with a mask for extra hygiene. I don't actually own a medical mask, so I used a kitchen towel attached with a safety pin.

 I covered a piece of cardboard in aluminum foil to use as a cake base.

 The original commission was for chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream in the theme Goodnight Moon. I hadn't read the book in years, so I had to look up some images for inspiration. I finally decided on the iconic window image with the curtain and a view of the moon outside. That meant a square shaped cake.

So here's the chocolate cake covered in peanut butter buttercream.

 While the cake was chilling, I worked on the words that will appear on the cake. I used a fondant alphabet pressform only in capital letters to spell out Goodnight Moon and Paul as well as the number 1.

 After forming the words, I set them aside to use later.

 Then I got the cake out of the refrigerator and rolled out a strip of green fondant to cover the sides.

 I wasn't concerned about it going all the way around because I knew the curtain would eventually cover one side anyway.

 I cut the fondant to be closer to the surface and tucked the sides around to wrap around the edges. There was a gap of around 3 inches on one side which I will address later.

 I then rolled out the dark blue fondant and cut it to be window shaped, pressing the blue to meet the green. Then I rolled out a thin snake of red and wrapped it all the way around the window to form a frame, pressing slightly to secure it into the small gap.

 I made the two vertical stripes with the red snakes as well.

 There wasn't much green left over, but what there was I cut into haphazard strips. Then I rolled out some orange and cut it into similar strips.

 I didn't want them to look perfect because it should look a little organic like fabric.

 I then took the strips and pressed them together so they would stick.

 Then I rolled it a bit to make it flat and trimmed off one side to make it look slightly curtain-like.

 Here was the trimmed result. The only problem was that at some points the curtain didn't want to stick together. Next time I would use a drop or two of water to stick them together before rolling it out.

 Next, I draped it over the left side of the window and down the left side of the cake. I tried to give it a couple of folds to make it look more natural.

 I used a circle cutter to cut out a moon out of white fondant, cut it in half, and pressed both halves into the red line.

 I placed the yellow Goodnight Moon letters around the side of the cake and the white Paul letters and the number 1 in the window.

 I then used my smallest circle cutter and star cutter to make a few more stars and placed them in the window.

 I was really happy with the result. It looked very much like the cover of the book.

 Happy First Birthday Paul!