Yummmm, Cake

I love to make birthday cakes. There's so much creativity, and so many new things to learn. A lot of it is self-taught, and I am definitely an amateur, but it's great fun!

Yet, I have not enjoyed eating cake. Cakes from the store have a funny taste to the frosting (which I've found is the shortening in it, and I so prefer buttercream frosting made with BUTTER, not shortening- not as white, but it tastes... well, it tastes!). I don't like the crumbly Styrofoam-like consistency of most cakes. I don't like the flavor of the "chocolate" cakes. So, I usually prefer, for my own birthday, to have something other than cake- unless it is a homemade from scratch. (My absolute favorite home made cake is a Silver White Cake, and my second favorite is the White Cake recipe found in BH&G cookbook).

Still, when Zoë asked for two birthday cakes, I was nonplussed. I especially enjoy making tasty cakes we can eat using the Cake Mix Doctor (can I rave about this book enough? doubtful). The recipes make the cakes not only edible, but enjoyable. I'm almost at the point where I might ask for a cake for my birthday because these recipes make box cake mixes yummy. And a yummy cake makes all the decorations worth the work.

Still, I've found that kids most prefer to peel the fondant off the outside of the cake, scrape off the icing/frosting, and leave most of the cake on the plate. *sigh* Still, I have a better chance of them eating the cake when I doctor them up a little.

Ok, back to the point of this post. We had "Stacy's Chocolate Chip Cake" as the Ladybug cake (and the Monkeys on the Bed cake) for Zoë's Birthday Party cake. It's a yellow cake with chocolate chips in it. Simple, but very yummy. I made an almond-flavored frosting to cover it with (next time I will probably just leave it as vanilla or even better, just butter). The red fondant was cherry flavored, and the brown was chocolate. Yummy.

Then, for Zoë's Birthday day cake we had a Snickerdoodle cake. It's a white cake with cinnamon mixed in, and the frosting has some cinnamon, too. It gives a tan tint to the frosting and cake, with little speckles in the frosting. And, it tastes soooooo good.


It's definitely one of my favorites (particularly since Travis gets tired of chocolate). I even made the roses out of the same cinnamon frosting (just much stiffer). I added a little Meringue powder to the recipe so that it would be better forming (stiff).


I think it took me about 45 minutes to frost the cake and put the flowers on. I was wishing I had those dumb plastic scissors to transfer the roses, but I did well with wax paper, double-sided tape, and a frosting spatula. I still need to work on my leaves- I haven't gotten the technique (or the right stiffness of frosting) to get those to look like I want them to.

Zoë was happy with her cake, and that's the most important part. All three girls ate most of their slice of cake (although I had to add a little extra frosting on M & M's cakes.) Oh, and each girl particularly asked for a rose.





Megan enjoyed her rose in more than one way...

Now, what cake should I make next???