Every dog has his day...

And today is 

Oliver's 14th Birthday!   

...because every birthday is special,
but celebrating #14 for any dog 
is quite the milestone!

So to celebrate this monumental occasion,
I baked an extra special doggie cake!

Happy Birthday, Ollie!  

Psst, I'll let you in on a little secret...

the best part about this cake was how simple and inexpensive it was!

I bought a $1.00 yellow cake mix at the grocery store and then asked the bakery if they'd sell me some ready-made buttercream. They sold me 1lb. of it for $4 (cheaper than buying the ingredients to mix it myself - plus a nice timesaver!)

I baked one 8x8 sheet cake and one, mini, round springform cake for the dog bowl (forgot I even had the pan. I bought it at Walmart a few years back for a couple of dollars).  I trimmed the top of the mini round cake off and hollowed it out about 1/3 of the way in the center so it would resemble a dog food bowl.

Then I trimmed the sheet cake a bit smaller (about 6x6) so it'd be nice and square.

I frosted it all with buttercream and then rolled out the fondant (I already had some on hand so I didn't have to buy any)

The pawprints I cut free-hand with a knife.  The letters for the bowl were cut out with mini alphabet cookie cutters.

The "dog food" in the bowl is simply Coco Puffs Cereal adhered with buttercream.

The Westie on top was made from two leftover pieces of cake stacked on top of each other. The nose, eyes, and tongue are pieces of fondant.

The little flag was made from a piece of craft foam and a broken skewer stick, and I cut the numbers out of another piece of foam and glued them on.

Easy peasy!

  
 Happy 14th Oliver!
We love you!