Cake

When Cindy and Charlotte were here, I asked them to show me how to make their famous cake.  Like they do, they went all out, and brought the cake mix, icing, lazy susan, cake decorating book ideas, and Charlotte even got me a starter kit from Wilton's icing.  I was so grateful for the tutorial...and, of course, the cake was delicious!  As I was learning from them, I was reminded of how much I learned from my mom growing up when we would ice Christmas sugar cookies.  I can only imagine how easy it would've been as a mom to forego the icing bags with all your kids for the sake of easiness, but she didn't, and I'm glad!

Don't mind my bag-holding technique.  I got better. 

I had in mind that I wanted to make a block cake like we all had when we turned one.  Ya know, you gotta keep the tradition alive!

Here's a picture of Joel's cake Cindy sent me (along with Abby's and Evan's, just like it).

But, when I asked my mom to send us a picture of MY cake, look what she came up with!

 

I didn't have a block cake!  She made me a cool clown one!

 

I shared the pictures of the old cakes with Abby and asked her how I could improve on them and make them cooler.  I took her suggestions and made the colors more vibrant and improved on the words.

 

Mom and Dad and Kathryn and Brad showed up late Friday night as I was icing the cake.  Kathryn and Mom kept me company in the kitchen as I put the finishing touches on it.  We decided, very systematically, to simply put the letters of Cole's name on the cake and then Kathryn had the wonderful idea to make a small penant with #1 on it (copycatting Abby's most recent family birthday cake idea) to get that important piece in there somewhere.

 

For some reason, my cake was quite a bit shorter (and maybe even smaller) than the old cakes, so we decided to leave off any extra writing on the sides and keep it clean, not busy.

 

I was really pleased with the way it turned out.  It helped that I had Kathryn cheering me on the entire time, "Oh Dana, that looks SO good!"

Can anyone add a picture with the #1 penant?

Cole was kind of timid eating the cake at first...until Marc gave him a fork and his Uncle Brad pushed his hand in it.

 

Notice the little tear in his eye.  He got snapped with the elastic from a birthday hat.  Poor guy!

Well, I'd say my first cake making experience was a good one thanks to Cindy and Charlotte and Mom and Kathryn.  It took me longer than I thought it would/it should, but I really enjoyed doing it.  But, I'm also glad I don't have to do another one for a while!