Abby Cadabby

My cousin's daughter turned 2 the end of October.  For the last few years, I've been doing her birthday cakes and her brother's (he's 2 yrs older).  They pick out the character/theme that they want, and I pretty much have free reign to do whatever design I like.  They have not been disappointed yet!

This year, she had an Abby Cadabby themed party.  So, after looking online for inspiration, I decided to do a 3D Abby sitting up on a 12" round cake.  After looking at the different 3D cake pans available, I decided that the 3D Standup Pooh Pan would be the best choice. 

Once it was baked and cooled, I carved the cake to approximate the shape of Abby.  Then used the star tip for her fir and fondant for her dress, and grass tip for her ponytails.  In order to sit her on top of the bigger cake, I decorated Abby on a 6" separator plate.  I marked on the 12" cake where the plate would sit, and used Bubble Tea straws as supports under the separator plate.  I like using straws for support because, rather than displacing the cake like wooden dowels do, the cake goes inside the straws.  I prefer the bubble tea straws because they are bigger than regular straws.

I stacked Abby on top of the base cake, it looked fantastic!  If only I had taken a picture then..........

I have a Honda Element (which I loooooove!!!), and all my cakes get transported in it.  I've had it 6.5 years and it has about 183k miles on it.  No, you didn't read that wrong!  I love to drive, and I drive everywhere, lol.  As can happen with a car with the many miles on it, it periodically needs repairs.  The car picked the week before the cake was due, to decide it needed a new head gasket.........and the shop kept finding more things that needed fixing in the engine.....it ended up taking them 2 weeks to get it fixed.  So....I ended up with a rental, at their expense, for delivery of Abby.  The only thing they had available that seemed to have a flat enough floor was a minivan.  For various reasons (which are unrelated to this), I hate minivans.  Oh well.....it was free....


I'll start out by saying, what you are about to read, is the first time this has EVER happened to me, and I sort of started to freak out (big surprise, I know).    In hindsight.....Abby should have traveled in her own box, but oh well, lol.  I put the cakes in an open top box in order to transport them.  Put the box behind the drivers seat in the mini-van (it seemed the most level).  Fortunately, I had a passenger along with me for the ride (my brother).  All seemed to be going fine, until about 5 minutes into our ride, he says to me "The cake is leaning."  Now....my brother is a practical joker and likes to joke around about stuff that not everyone considers funny.  So, I laughed.  He assured me it truly was leaning over.  I totally started freaking out!  Thankfully, he was thinking much more level headed than I was!  I was trying to figure out how I was going to drive the almost 80 miles to the party with a cake that wouldn't sit up straight!


We ended up stopping at the grocery store and getting some bamboo skewers.  We propped Abby up with them, but sticking them into her neck (which fortunately still had the metal core in it) and into the side of the box.  We first propped her so she couldn't wobble side to side, and thought this was enough.  Oh silly us!  Not 10 minutes later, someone stopped short in front of me, and I had to slam the brakes on.  Yup....Abby took a header into the back of the driver seat.  Fortunately, she only lost one of her ponytails.  So, my wonderful brother propped her up, and the rest of the trip was without incident (yeah!)!


I was able to hide most of the damage once I arrived at the party, with the exception of the ponytail.  The birthday girl was still very happy with her cake!