When spring comes, I typically don’t start thinking about growing things in the garden, but rather creating things in the kitchen, specifically cakes. We have a lot of birthdays in the spring and summer in this family, and everyone expects a special cake.
Sometimes there are requests attached to the cakes, such as a pirate ship or a princess castle. Other times it is simply to make a “cool” cake. Sometimes these cakes are requested not for birthdays but for other family get together.
There is really only two requirements for these cakes. The first is that I must be able to create them using ordinary cake pans and easy to find decorative ingredients, and that the instructions must be easy and simple to follow. There will be no fancy swishes of a cake decorating tip nor much hardware to hold a cake together. A little bit of carving is okay, but if I have to break out the power tools then it is a no go.
Most of the time, I find fun ideas for cute cakes online or in women’s magazines. The later often features similar ideas, such as the ever popular pool, lake, sea or moat made out of blue Jello. Teddy Grahms cookies are another popular decorative item for cute cakes. These little bears are made even cuter by the fact that you can dress them with decorator’s icing, giving them little bikinis, for example. (I prefer my bears less skimpily dressed and will give them one-piece suits for lounging by the Jello.)
A variant of the cute cake is the cute cupcake or the cute cupcake-cake, that is a cut cake made up of a bunch of cupcakes put together into a visual whole, rather than just a bunch of cute cupcakes.
This year, I am hoping that I can convince at least one of my boys that they really would like a Lego cake. After all, it is a simple rectangle with a few round dents at the top and frosted over with one color. What do you think?
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