Let them eat cake...

Cake that I made, I hope!

When I was growing up my mom made the birthday cake for my party every single year. It was a boxed cake mix, the store frosting, the words created with either those little candy letters or the tubes of gel. It was nothing fancy...but oh how I loved my cake! Every single year. Each year I got to pick out my flavor, the type of frosting and what I wanted on the cake. The fact that my mom made it for me, made a point of making sure I got something unique that I wanted for my birthday always made me feel very special.

I always imagined that when I had kids I would do the same thing. I eagerly anticipated the idea of making a special birthday cake for my kids for their birthdays. When celebrating Joshua and Samantha's birthdays in the past, I decided to buy one large cake from Costco. I was hosting one party for both their birthdays since they were born about 3 weeks apart, and didn't think one basic homemade cake would be enough, and honestly...deep down I think I was a little worried about how it would appear since every party I'd gone to seemed to have fancy store bought cakes or really creative homemade ones. I didn't want to fail or pale by comparison. It's funny, because I used to have such confidence in my creative skills, from cooking to baking, to decorating, and creating. But I've found that over the years, it's just one more area that I seem to have lost my confidence...but that's a post for another day...

Anyway, this past year, I decided enough was enough. I wanted to bake my kid's birthday cake. But more than that, I wanted to be able to make something individually special for each one of them. Even though we will celebrate their birthdays together, I wanted them to feel like it was still their own individual special day and one way to do that was to make a cake for each one of them. I wanted to be able to make something that looked good though, too. Although I've made previous cakes and decorated them in 'more decorative' ways, I wanted to learn how to create more. I had watched a good friend of mine explore cake decorating and loved what she was doing, I've seen my friend make really fun cakes for her kid's birthdays, and I wanted to do that. So I decided to expand what knowledge I may have already had and take a cake decorating class. Of course the class I found didn't start until AFTER Joshua and Samantha's birthday party for this year.

I decided though, not to let that stop me and decided to make a batch of buttercream frosting from scratch, and make their cakes. Here's what came of it...

This is Samantha's cake (strawberry)

Joshua's cake (chocolate)

Both cakes with the batches of cupcakes made for our guests...

And the kid's enjoying their cakes.

I love that picture! Growing up my brother and I were often allowed, and in fact encouraged, to take a big bite out of our cakes before they were sliced and served. It was really funny because no one encouraged them to do this, I just turned around and there they were eating their cakes. Priceless! So, I made these cakes and they were really tasty, and the frosting, while messy to make, is really GOOD! The decorating was 0kay, but I was pretty eager to take a class to learn more.

My classes started and here are the results so far.

Week one: create a pattern using a cookie cutter and them fill in using a tip and colored frosting of choice.

Week 2: a little cake carving, use of a particular gel to make the windows, and then using a similar but larger tip to cover the car.

Different view of week 2.

Week 3: I both loved and hated this week!

I finally felt like I was learning some new skills, but was really frustrated when I couldn't do them as easily or well as I wanted (I tend to have high expectations of myself). The flowers were harder than I anticipated, and the set up of the class didn't allow for me to practice and do as much as I wanted to. The instructor kept telling me to 'SLOW DOWN' which is my theme apparently! It also made me realize that the type of class I really wanted was one where we weren't necessarily making an actual cake every week, but spending our time learning how to make and practice multiple and multiple flowers, and using the different tips, and smooth the frosted cake. But that's not this class, which is okay.

I've started looking for a book on how to make buttercream flowers and haven't found one yet, but did discover some how to videos on youtube and I plan to work with those. So I'm still excited about my class (although altogether with supplies each week, it's kinda expensive), and looking forward to learning how to make roses next week. And more than that, I'm really looking forward to making pretty, yummy, and creative cakes for my kids and others in the future.