So my cousin's daughter Kallie loves her birthdays almost as much as I love mine. She started planning this, her third birthday party, as soon as her second birthday had passed. We are definitely related. This year, Kallie decided to have a Strawberry Shortcake birthday. I thought, "oh yay! I loved Strawberry Shortcake as a kid. This will be fun." So I went online to get some inspiration and was surprised by what I found. My old friend Strawberry Shortcake was...different. It's been 20 years, and I guess SSC wasn't loving the way she was aging, so she had some work done. For a reminder, this is what she used to look like:
Remember her trip to the Big Apple to compete in a baking competition? Ahhh...childhood. Well, the new Strawberry Shortcake might be more likely to compete in a beauty competition. Take a look:
Oh Strawberry! How you've changed. I'm really not ok with this. I could write a whole other post about what this says about the over sexualization of young girls in America or the media's ideas of what beauty is...but let's just get back to the cake for now. Kallie is more familiar with this new Strawberry Shortcake, so that's what I based the cake on.
Here's a view of the front. Love the bright colors.
She got comfortable on a patch of strawberries.
She brought her pets Pupcake and Custard to the party. While she's always had Custard, she must have adopted Pupcake after her facelift.
While it's definitely not a traditional cake decorating method, I used a sticker for her face ;) I couldn't get it right when I tried making it out of gumpaste and I decided it would be more important to Kallie that it looked like Strawberry than that I'd made it totally edible.
Close up on Pupcake and Custard!
Kallie really liked the cake!! I was so glad to make it for her. The first cake I ever decorated was an Elmo cake for Kallie's first birthday, so it's special that my cake decorating skills have grown up along with my favorite little girl. Love you Kallie!! Let's start planning next year's birthday now ;)
