It’s rather ironic that tonight of all nights I choose to sit down and write a post about my son’s birthday cake, since I am forbidden from eating such things at the moment. Forbidden might be a strong word to use given that my ban from indulging in such sweet pastries is self imposed. I am on a Spring cleanse. That means many delectables are off limits for a week and a half. And so I must satisfy my cravings through the only means I know how: eye candy. Literally.

My younger son turned three last week and I got it into my head several weeks back that I had to make him a spectacular cake. Put my new found cake decorating skills to work and turn out something fabulous. Being the over ambitious person that I am and with only borrowed time to do it, I thought I was picking a rather easy design in the form of a Lego cake. Lego has become a favourite past time for my boys so I thought it fitting to make a cake in the shape of bricks. The bonus came in the form of a Lego man cake mold from a neighbour. So I started by baking Ina Garten’s flag cake as well as her chocolate butter cream cake. I baked slab cakes AND mini cupcakes. Once baked, cooled and refrigerated, I sliced the slab cakes in thirds and constructed two rectangular cakes, four layers high alternating the flag cake with the chocolate cake. I topped them off with the mini cupcakes, all with a mocha butter cream that I kind of made up a recipe for. Once crumb coated and cooled, I applied home-made marshmallow fondant. I know, I know, I’m crazy. I just could have bought the fondant from the store, but no, I had to make this damn cake FROM SCRATCH! I didn’t love the way the fondant turned out but it was definitely more malleable than the store-bought kind. To make myself super crazy I decided the two bricks needed to sit atop one slab cake, which I covered in green fondant (that one was store-bought). And with a star tip I decorated the Lego man in coloured vanilla butter cream. I think I must have made enough cake to feed a small army. While there were plenty of leftovers there was no man left in sight. He was devoured by the kids and the adults had to satisfy their sweet tooths with the giant bricks of cake (too bad!).

I think it was well worth the effort, and while I’m nowhere near as talented as some of the crazy cake decorators who do this for a living, I did give myself a pat on the back for my attempt. I’ll leave it to you to be the judge. Unfortunately I can’t give you a taste, but I can leave you with the recipe for the mocha butter cream.

Lego Cake

MOCHA BUTTER CREAM RECIPE

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

4 cups of icing sugar (sifted)

1/4 cocoa powder (sifted)

2 Tbsp. (give or take) strong brewed coffee

Cream the butter and shortening together

Add the icing sugar and cocoa powder and whip until fluffy, adding the coffee to thin consistency of icing as necessary.

What a cute tasty looking Lego man!

More often than not my older son complains about how life isn’t fair, he never gets to do anything, he fundamentally disagrees with the concept of sharing, life isn’t fair and did I mention life isn’t fair? But once a year my son gets exactly what he wants: his choice of birthday cake. He usually puts his “order” in the day after his last birthday, so that gives me roughly 364 days to think about how I’m going to do it. Believe me, it’s a lot of pressure and expectation to live up to when the order is coming from your 5 year-old child. And with each passing year, the cake requests are becoming more involved and elaborate. Years 1 to 3 were baked and designed for my whims, but Quinn quickly caught on and for his fourth birthday he requested a Buzz Lightyear cake. Rather than kill myself trying to pipe a Disney character in buttercream, I got a fabulous cake topper (which Quinn got to keep afterwards and add to his astounding toy collection) and iced the cake in coordinating colours. The character cake theme continued for his fifth birthday upon which he requested a Batman cake, only this time he also requested the cake be a lemon cake, so I dutifully complied, making Martha Stewart’s knock-out 1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake with homemade lemon curd in the middle. I did a simple yellow buttercream icing with the Batman symbol in black piping. And once again, this year Quinn wanted the same flavoured cake, but this time he wanted the Incredible Hulk. In rather out of character fashion, I left the planning of the cake decorating to the last minute. In fact I had no idea how or what I was going to do because I’m definitely no visual artist and was not even going to attempt to pipe the Hulk in icing. So I panicked. After scouring online and failing to find a Hulk cake topper that I could buy in the next 24 hours, I headed over to the bakery at the grocery store. Sure enough the kind baker behind the counter told me he would go in the back and look for the Hulk cake topper. God must have been smiling down upon me that day because sure enough the baker returned with the cake topper (which, again will be added to my children’s ever expanding collection of toys). With cake topper in hand I headed home to embark on the icing. I should backtrack a bit and let you know I baked the slab cakes on a Thursday night and decorated them on Saturday afternoon for a Sunday morning party. Saturday rolled around and my girlfriend, Karen, who is taking the cake decorating class with me, came over after offering to help me with the cake. Unlike Karen, who always has a vision and a plan for her children’s birthday cakes and who incidentally, is a bonafide artiste, I am a bit of a MacGyver when it comes to decorating a cake–no plan, just some icing, a piping bag and toothpicks. We settled on a pale grey for the base colour and a fabulous green for the “trim.” Karen came up with this great idea to melt sugar, add food colouring and then pour it on to a sheet of parchment to dry, which we could then use as a plaque for writing on. We added other details like the blue and green sugar and shards of the candy to make it look like the Hulk was about to smash the words on the plaque. I’m pretty pleased with how the cake turned out (as you’ll see in the pictures). I must be a glutton for punishment because I’ve already asked my son what kind of cake he wants for his next birthday. His answer: “a lemon cake again!”

Aaaarrrgh! I'm the Incredible Hulk!

Eat Me!?*@!?!

I like pies. I especially like making pies. Savoury, sweet, I like ‘em all. However, I don’t always have the time to dedicate to pie making. I usually go on a pie making bender when the various fruits are in season, most notably in the Fall when apples are in season. I make them assembly line-style, coring, peeling and seasoning the apples. Setting them aside while I cut the pastry (old school style with two knives) and press it into the pie dish (no rolling pin here, since I make a crumbly version). Then comes the apple filling, followed by the crumble top. At this stage, I usually wrap up the pies and pop them into the freezer until I need to bake one. Right now my freezer is EMPTY of all pies, so it’s a good thing the strawberry season is just around the corner. My most recent pie was a pecan pie. I actually don’t eat this pie because it’s like a giant butter tart, which is good if you love butter tarts–and I do–but for some reason I prefer the small single serving to the slice of pie. Anyhow, my sister-in-law put in a special order for my brother-in-law. He just turned 40 and we had a party to celebrate. Pecan pie is highly coveted by my husband’s family, particularly my father-in-law. So on special occasions like birthdays, I oblige and make a pecan pie. The recipe isn’t too complicated, again it’s just about having the time to make the pastry, cooking the sugar and corn syrup, add the eggs and vanilla and then place the pecans just so before baking it. I do love the way the pie looks so regal, but I can’t attest to the flavour. You’ll just have to make it yourself and let me know!

Homemade Pecan Pie

I think it’s fitting that during the one week of the year I am not allowed to partake in eating any food stuffs made with leavening agents (eg. baking powder) I’m going to write about birthday cakes. Those who know me well know that I love to bake. I’ve always dreamed of selling cakes, pastries, cookies and breads at a bakery but I’m not sure that romantic vision would translate into cold hard cash. I don’t think I’d like to wake up at the crack of dawn to bake baguettes and chocolate chip cookies for customers only willing to pay me 2 bucks a loaf and 50 cents a cookie.  I have yet to figure out the business model that would allow me to bake my treats at my leisure and at at the same time convince a paying customer that my cakes are worth $500 a pop. So until I turn that dream into a reality I like to bake for my family. In particular, since becoming a Mom, I started challenging myself to bake birthday cakes for my two boys that were kid-friendly to look at, but adult-friendly to taste.

This year I baked my younger son a rich chocolate cake in a cake mould shaped like a race car. I “mounted” the #2 blue car on a sheet of chocolate chip cookie iced to look like asphalt. The cake recipe came from the original Barefoot Contessa cookbook  and the cookie recipe, which I doubled, came from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties! My older son, who turned 5, had far more specific stipulations about what kind of cake he wanted and how exactly it should look. He vascillated between a vanilla “Buzz Lightyear” cake and a lemon “Batman” cake but I reminded him he had the Buzz Lightyear cake for his 4th birthday, so he settled on the latter. So a lemon cake it was (a sophisticated palate for a 5-year-old, no?).  The cake recipe came from Martha Stewart and it’s called a “1-2-3-4 lemon cake.” There’s a lovely lemon curd that I made to go between the layers and the icing is just a simple butter cream. Take a look at the cake I made for the little guy this year.

Blue Race Car Cake

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