Cake!

Sometimes, I need ideas. Especially when I am blogging every day. Today, I borrowed an idea from this list.

In the past, I never made E's birthday cakes. Or anything more than just a basic frosted cake. Either my mom made them, or we ordered them. Then I made the cake for her 12th birthday.

She loved it! And said it was the best birthday cake ever!

When we had the ultrasound to let us know that Sophie was going to be a girl, we didn't tell anyone right away. Instead, we had a "reveal" party. The color of the cake was the answer. I had actually ordered this one; and was told it wouldn't be a problem. I wanted a pink cake, but not a strawberry flavored cake. The morning of the party, the cake decorator called and said it was impossible to make my cake. Panic! I rushed to the grocery store and bought a white cake mix, pink food coloring, and pink and blue decorator gels. This is how it turned out:

I had to use LOTS of white frosting to cover all the pink. I didn't want to give it away early!

After making these two cakes, I was feeling pretty confident. I decided to try something new for Sophie's first birthday - fondant. I love the way it looks on cakes. Since it was my first time, I used a prepared fondant instead of trying to make it myself. I did some online research, and made the cake. I used the pink food coloring from the reveal cake to color most of the fondant, with a bit colored green for decorating. It was surprisingly easy to work with!

 Sophie LOVES fondant, too - she pulled the icing off her slice of cake and ate it by itself! Yes, she was up for a long time that night.

Mmm, yummy!

I did have one cake fiasco - Emma's birthday cake this year. She completely designed her cake. She wanted a mixture of chocolate cake and white Funfetti cake, marbled together into one. I had to make it two layers, since it was two boxes of mix. I mixed both cake mixes, and put half into each pan. The problem, though, is that the Funfetti makes a thick, dense batter and the chocolate made a thin, runny batter. As they baked, they didn't bond together, and when I took them out of the pans, both layers crumbled. I tried patching them up with frosting, but we still had a bit of a collapse. The cake looked awful! Emma said she didn't care what it looked like, though, as long as it tasted good. And it did - very good.

Like last year, she wanted green frosting, and I added blue and white sugar crystals. Since I used so much frosting to patch up the cake (unsuccessfully) it didn't cover the entire sides! At least it was delicious.

Any cake horror stories or successes for you? Share them! Someone has to be able to top the crumbling cake, or burning my own birthday cake. (I did this the morning of my 16th birthday party - Mom had made the cake and left it on the stove. I wasn't feeling well, turned on the burner under the teapot to make tea and went back to my room. Came out later to the smell of burning cake and the realization that I had turned the wrong burner on high.) Tell your cake story in a comment.