Preschool Farewell Cake

This was a cake I offered to bring to my daughter's preschool goodbye party. It was a party for the school children who were going to school in the fall and for one of my daughter's favorite teachers who was leaving and going to another preschool.

I also had a large handful of rainbow colored decorations from a cake I never ended up making. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to use them. All small children love color.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say on the cake. In the end I decided on "Alles Gute", which is German and means basically halfway between farewell and congratulations. It's a congratulatory phrase that literally wishes the person everything well. It doesn't translate well, but is a positive and not a sad phrase.

I let my daughter choose which kind of cake I would make and she chose funfetti. So I baked two batches of funfetti cake in my 10 inch square cake pans.
 Then I filled it with American buttercream and crumb coated it.
 While the cake was chilling, I sorted out my old decorations by color so I could see what I had. I also tasted the ones that had broken to make sure they still tasted okay, and they were fine.
 Then I frosted the cake again, going light on the corners because otherwise the cake carrier couldn't close. Then I piped stars of frosting using a star tip around the bottom and the top of the cake, avoiding the corners once again.
 I rolled out some rainbow colored fondant and cut out the letters to the words "Alles Gute".
 Then, holding a ruler over the cake (not touching it), I marked two straight lines in the buttercream to make sure I placed the letters straight. Then, starting in the middle of the words, I placed them as close to centered as I could.
 I started with the largest decorations, which were the large butterfly cut outs, and placed them randomly around the cake.
 I continued to place decorations going from largest to smallest and trying to distribute the colors as evenly as I could.
 In the end, I decided to use all the ones I had. Butterflies, bows, stars, hearts and flowers.
 There were so many that it almost looked like sprinkles. Perfect for preschool-aged kids.
 I liked how it turned out. For an older child, it would be too much, but for a group of 20 five-year-olds, it was just the right amount of color.
 Alles Gute!


Watch the whole process on our YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/qxLQ2GQ-vqc
Für das deutsche Video klickt hier: https://youtu.be/3TXBQT4DS6s

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