**This post originally appeared on my other blog, YinMomYangMom.com.**

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and here’s why:

I’ve always been the kind of person who has a tough time focusing on more than one thing at a time, especially if I’m feeling unsure of myself.  A few weeks back, I made the wackadoo decision to attempt these fancy-schmancy birthday cakes for my kids’ birthday party today.

I’ve actually worked on cakes like this before, (more on that in my upcoming “Let’s Talk Business- Allie Edition” series) but never without the careful supervision and instruction of an experienced pro, and never in my home kitchen.  I learned quickly how much more challenging that can be!

Long story short, these beauties are the result of a full nine days of my complete attention.  The cakes and frostings were made with my own two hands, from scratch and no shortcuts.  I used recipes from my favorite baking reference, Rose Levy Berenbaum’s “The Cake Bible,” (All-Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake, Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake, Vanilla Mousseline Buttercream, and Classic Egg White Chocolate Buttercream).  The fondant, colors, and tools were all purchased at Wal-Mart.

My main motivation to post about this was not to garner praise and admiration (although it’s certainly welcome and appreciated! 😉 ), but to repay all the other bloggers/websites that provided me the creative inspiration.  When I set out to do this, I had some trouble finding images of other Team Umizoomi and Transformers Rescue Bots cakes that had gone before me.  I did find a few Umizoomi’s, and some regular Transformers’, and luckily it was enough to get my creative juices flowing.  So hopefully in the future, some other wackadoo with a wild hair will google search a similar idea, and I can feel good about contributing something back to the creative juice bank.

Team Umizoomi Cake

Transformers Rescue Bots Cake

With special thanks to: http://pizzazzerie.com/parties/childrens-parties/transformers-birthday-party/, and http://www.creativecakesbyashley.com/birthday-cakes/img_3661

Wackadoo, out!