Adventures in Baking

Sunday was Josh's Mom's birthday. Since I'm so on top of things (like birthday presents...woops!), I'd had thoughts about making a really tasty and different cake, or at least trying to decorate (with more than just frosting) a less fancy cake. I ended up deciding to try to improve the physical appearance of an otherwise average cake. How did it go? Well...let me put it this way: You win some, you lose some.

Since her favorite color is orange, we dyed a white cake orange. It took a lot of fancy food coloring, and in the end, I think it wasn't super successful. We didn't bake the cake long enough, and then when we tried to level off one of the round cakes (for the bottom layer of the cake), it ended up, well, mutilated. Evidence below:

*Let me go ahead and apologize now for not being one of those ultra talented people who take really good pictures of their food and figure out the lighting so you can actually tell what you're looking at* 

Sorry. 

We dumped the orange cakes, and started over. Good thing we buy eggs from Costco - you know - bulk. Luckily, we had 2 of the 3 eggs needed for Cake number 2 (or 3 and 4, if you count each round separately, and sometimes I do). So we borrowed an egg from our neighbors and commenced baking cake #2.

This time, we decided to make a chocolate cake, and just dye the frosting. Much better plan. I had this idea in my head for a couple of days, that I wanted to do something different, and try my hand at something I learned from Bakerella once. My MIL really likes the phrase "We do not doubt that our Mothers knew it" (from the story of the Stripling Warriors in the Book of Mormon) and would like that on her headstone. So I thought I would use that phrase. 

I had a bag of orange candy melts on hand (but only 2 eggs, yes, I understand the irony) so I melted them in my squeeze bottle, and wrote out "We do not doubt that she KNOWS it!". I wrote on lined paper with a sharpie, and then taped the paper to a cookie sheet, and taped Waxed Paper over the top of it, like so:

When the candy melts were melted, I traced over the words with the squeeze bottle. Remember in grade school, when you would be gluing something, and all of a sudden the glue would pop because there wasn't enough glue down by the nozzle? Same thing happens with squeeze bottles of candy melts. Only difference is, it leaves a weird blast-looking hole in your candy melt craft. 

{Side Note: Only shake the squeeze bottle up and down, not back and forth - even if you're SUPER frustrated with it. I ended up with orange candy melts on my neck and arms.}

After I got all the words written out with candy, I drew some hearts and put the tray in the freezer to harden the candy melts again. 

The cake baked, and frosting made, we just had to assemble it. I should have done thicker layers on the words. I did "she" in cursive writing, and that was the sturdiest of all of them. I should have just done the whole thing in cursive, and it wouldn't have broken in so many places. Oh well. We stuck the words and hearts all around the edges of the cake. 

You can see where the "N" cracked. :(

We dyed the excess frosting pink (Josh picked and mixed the color) and I wanted to write "Happy Birthday to a Mother who knows"...but that didn't work out exactly as planned. I was pressed for time, so instead of whipping out my decorating tips and bags, I just grabbed a ziploc bag, shoved the frosting in (well, Josh did that) and cut the end off and wrote that way. Unfortunately, I cut too much off of the ziploc bag, and the lettering came out fat. So it said "Happy B-day to a Mother who knows". Not too bad. Except that it looks like Harry Potter's birthday cake from Hagrid. 

It wasn't until we were on our way to my parents' house that I realized how I could have fixed the fat lettering. I should have just dropped that ziploc bag into another ziploc bag, and cut a smaller hole. Oh well, now I know. 

and at least she knows we love her and we did our best. :)

Happy Birthday, to a Mother who Knows and does not doubt. May the next 60 years be as great as the last. 

xoxo