The Cat In the Hat Birthday Party: Cake Frosting

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter
• 4-1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• red food coloring

Instructions

1. 1
   In a medium-sized bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Gradually add 2 cups of the powdered sugar, beating well. Slowly beat in the milk and the vanilla. Once these ingredients are well-mixed, slowly beat in the remaining sugar. (If the frosting seems to be getting too thick to spread, try adding a few more drops of milk.)
2. 2
   Remove half the frosting from the medium-sized bowl and put it in the small bowl. Add a few drops of red coloring until the frosting in one bowl is the shade of red you want. Leave the frosting in the other bowl white.
3. 3
   When the cake is cool and you've finished the frosting, it s time to decorate the cake. First, you'll cut the cake in to the shape of the Cat’s hat. Then, using the two different colors of frosting you just made, you can decorate the cake so it looks just like the Cat’s hat.
4. 4
   Decorating the cake: Place the cake on a table with the shorter side facing you. Starting at the top, cut a strip of cake that is 11 inches long and 1 inch wide off ofeach of the two longer sides. The 2 inches you have left at the bottom form the hat's brim. (If your cake shrank during baking, you may need to cut a shorter strip of cake off of each side, to insure a 2-inch wide brim.)
5. 5
   Starting at the end of the cake closest to you, apply a 2-inch-wide stripe of white frosting across the cake.
6. 6
   Don't forget to frost the sides of the cake, too. Then spread a 2-inch-wide stripe of red frosting above
7. 7
   the white stripe. Continue alternating between white and red stripes until you've frosted the entire cake.
8. 8
   ENJOY!