Birthday Cake Round-Up

I enjoy cake-making and actually do it as a side job (gives me scrapping money!) Most of the cakes I make are character cakes, some with the shaped pans, but most on a slab cake where I ice in the images - usually from coloring book pages.

Here's one of my favorite cakes that I have done. A 16-yr-old came to me with her idea for this cake. She wanted Little Mermaid characters added to a castle.

There are three cakes, iced and set a bit off-center. I iced it all in white to resemble bricks, added some vines and flowers, and for the towers I used paper towel rolls covered in icing. I spread that on the night before (along with a crumb coat on the cakes) and left it to set over-night. The turrets are ice-cream cones. The sand is just brown icing with some graham crumbs on top. The little "stone" pieces around the edges are actually mini-marshmallows cut in thirds and squished a bit to look like stones.

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This Wonderpets cake was also a fun one. The cake part is a round cake cut in half and iced together to form the bottom of the flyboat. The wheels were cookies stuck to the cake and then iced. The sail is just a piece of construction paper.

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My youngest son always wants a special cake for his birthday. For his 8th birthday he wanted a Lego cake, with the police chasing the Brickster.

You can see more of my cakes HERE!

Recent cakes

First attempt using fondant :-)

Jessica's in the kitchen

Jessica tried her hand at fondant icing this week. I think she did awesome!

Five cakes this week!

Jessica iced this last cake for me -- it was one just for us! I think we only have 2 pieces left :-)

decorated cakes, again.....

Pancakes

Since today is Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) I thought I'd post my pancake recipe. Before I found this recipe, we were making the boxed mix and thought they were alright. Well, let's just say we'll never go back to the boxed mix! LOL!

PANCAKES

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
4 Tbsp vegetable oil (I usually omit this)
2 cups buttermilk (I use regular milk with a splash of vinegar)

In a small bowl, combine the oats, flours, baking soda, salt and sugar. In another small bowl, beat the eggs, oil, and buttermilk. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Pour batter onto greased hot griddle (we use olive oil in our pan). Flip when bubbles from around the edges. Cook until the second side is golden brown.

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Okay, here's what we find works for us :-)

We have done these with 2 cups all-purpose flour, when we didn't have the whole wheat. They still turn out fine. We also add about 2 tsp of cinnamon in our batter. Delicious! Our pancakes are usually about 7-inch and we can make probably 8 pancakes with this recipe. Believe me, one pancake per person is plenty! They are very filling, especially when you top them with fruit or yogurt.

cakes.... again :-)

hockey fan!

For a skating party

Lightning McQueen is popular for the little boys.

I know there's no High School Musical 7, but that's the age of the little girl :-)