Luigi Cake

A few weeks ago C turned 7. The boys are currently obsessed with Wii and Super Mario Games, so it was no surprise that C requested a "Luigi" cake. Due to his food allergies, I can't just order him a beautiful bakery cake.  So I am always trying to figure out how to accommodate the theme he requests into my very basic homemade cakes. I think the best cake I've ever made was probably the Chick Hicks cake I made for C when he was 5. I set the bar too high with that one though, because now I never feel like I quite live up to that cake! When C requested a Luigi cake, he was imagining a vertical cake carved in the shape of Luigi. But since we had just returned from a great trip to Florida the night before, I was exhausted. I could only really work on the cake while baby A was sleeping, which was when I also wanted to be sleeping. I knew there was no way I'd have the mental sharpness to figure out how to make a full body Luigi cake. Especially not a vertical one! So instead, I looked online for pictures of Luigi, and when I found a satisfactory 2D image, I printed it out, enlarged it, cut out just the face, and used that as a template. After using a toothpick to trace the outline on the cake, to make sure the overall shape was right, I freehanded the rest of the face with icing. It didn't come out quite how I was envisioning, but C said "Wow, Mom! That looks just like Luigi! I thought you were going to make a whole Luigi, but the face is just perfect!"

That's good enough for me!

Hubby insists that there must always be an extra candle on the cake ("One for good luck!").

Now to figure out what to do for the Mario cake O requested for his birthday....