So lets talk about cake smashes…. Everyone these days wants to book a photographer to capture their little ones cake smash to celebrate their big day but what fun is it if you can’t get your princess to actually dive into that cake? Most babies at this age are not exposed yet to eating cake unless they have an older sibling feeding them snacks when mom and dad are not looking 😉 Although some kids have no problem diving right in, a lot of babies will have no idea what to do when faced with a big fat cake placed in front of them. I usually place the cake in front of baby and give them a few minutes to start exploring and hopefully they get very curious but for the ones who don’t, mommy has something in her diaper bag that will do the trick. When booking the session with mom I give her a list of things to bring along to the photo shoot. On that list is going to be puffs or cheerios, a somewhat small snack and not very messy for baby. When babies don’t want to dig into the cake I hide their snacks that mom brought along into the icing. This gets your baby to start picking at the icing so they can go find their snack and make that so desired mess we all want. Usually this trick than gets baby interested in the cake, and in case they don’t go digging for those puffs and are too busy licking the icing of their teeny tiny fingers, rest assured I will edit out those Cheerios in Photoshop.

I have another little secret for you that may be deterring your cutie from eating that icing, it, its called bitter icing, not all icing is as tasty as it looks, I guess looks can be deceiving. I would say you can pretty much have any color icing but if I have to choose 2 colors that are big NO’s they would be red and black. Those 2 particular colors are very bitter tasting and most babies will not enjoy licking the icing if they were purely red or black, neither would adults like the taste to be quite honest. Yes I know the image above has black icing however there are only bits of black smeared over the white on this cake and the base of the cake is all vanilla white leaving this little guy no problem to dig into his cake.

Here’s another little tidbit you may want to know, which I bet you didn’t. Carrots, I know your baby aint chomping on carrot sticks like a bunny just yet however they’re probably  smacking their lips from carrot flavored baby food. The camera picks up everything and by everything I mean if you fed your baby, baby carrots for breakfast, my camera is going to know that. Stay away from baby carrots the day of your planned photo shoot. Of course if you forget and it’s too late you should be fine, a good photographer who edits their images well can get rid of this in post editing.

I hope you find these secrets helpful and enjoy your babies very first birthday! If you are looking for a milestone photographer in the Baltimore DMV area, feel free to get in touch with me to find out more information about your very first cake smash session.

Your truly,

Chana Mirel Photography