Cake smashes are just so much fun!
But I have found that probably 75% of the cake smashers aren't really keen on the cakes being offered.
These new 1 year old toddlers are just not used to too much sweetness.

Now you can spend around $70 on a specially made cake (that I see often the little ones don't like much) or you can spend just a bit of time to make a cake that they will love to eat and smoosh around. Little ones lose interest very quickly if the cake is too hard, it needs to be soft and collapse really easily
The cake in the above picture was just a chocolate sponge from the supermarket and iced at home, totally perfect as it fell apart and went everywhere, he loved the texture and the taste. (It actually cleaned up well too as it wasn't all gooey).

There are plenty of healthy options, sugarless and with fruit juice or bananas and yoghurt or cream cheese icings.
For a healthy options and ideas I've come across a few good recipes:

1. Healthy Sugar-Free Banana & Apple Smash Cake
2. Healthy First Birthday Cake
3. Banana Baby Birthday Smash Cake
4. Baby’s First Birthday Cake -“Healthy Smash Cake

Just thought you might like to see a few photos from Lann's cake smash, he loved smashing up his cake... and loved it even more when he realised the cake actually tasted great too. Absolutely priceless!

The cake smash has been booked, and now I need to know how the parents picture it in their minds, colours, favourite themes etc. For this one I was asked to make it for a boy and with a bit of a Maori theme. 
So, I thought, ok, shades of blue which made me think of paua shell, hmm I need to find some paua patterned material, (sometimes in Gisborne it's hard to get some items), but I managed to find some at Bernina 'yay!'.
I then chopped it up into flags, folded tops over and hot glued, threaded nto string and  'voila' a paua shell bunting :).
I hope you enjoy the following photos as much as this wee chap loved his time in the studio.