For a girl who loves her horses: Kaitlyn turns 11

Kaitlyn loves her horses. So her horses came to the party.

Two heads, cut by hand

The pair of them are fondant, cut and shaped one piece at a time and laid onto the cake — ears, cheeks, muzzles, all built up in layers so the faces have some depth to them rather than sitting flat.

The one behind is a chestnut with a white blaze running down the front of her face and a black forelock between the ears. The one in front is paler, and she is the one wearing the flowers: her mane is sectioned off down her neck into little bound tufts, each one tied with a turquoise band, with a spray of yellow daisies tucked in behind her ear.

That mane is the fussiest part of the whole cake and it is the part I would point at first.

Building the pasture around them

Everything else is buttercream. The sky is pale blue across the top, the field is two greens — a flat one for the far pasture and a darker one piped in short strokes for the grass in front, so the ground has some texture instead of reading as a green rectangle.

A white fence runs along the horizon behind them, and a couple more daisies sit down in the grass at the bottom. Her name and the number are piped in brown script up in the sky, and the whole thing is finished with a heavy brown rope border all the way round the edge.

What's inside

Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.

Happy 11th birthday, Kaitlyn

What could be better than your favorite horses right there on your cake?