Where did my infant go?

Cake Revisited

I'm revisiting the topic of birthday cakes, since my husband celebrated his 48th birthday yesterday and as promised in a previous post I made his cake.  I did ask him what he wanted and he said he did not want me to go to the trouble of making a cake.  That was a nice sentiment, but I'm very much against not making a birthday cake.

In this world of low fat this, and weight loss that, your birthday seems to be the only acceptable day to eat cake.  It is also rude not to enjoy other's birthday cake on their special day, so I say bring on the birthdays and bring on the cake!

There is nothing wrong with a store bought cake, nor is there anything wrong with paying someone $50 to make a custom cake.  But if you are not afraid of a little work it is really not that hard to do one yourself.  In fact, I have found that all the work is worth it when the people you love see all the effort you went through for them.  My husband, Tom, has been a Van Halen fan since before they were even world famous, and I knew that was the direction I was going to go.  So a little research on the Internet allowed me to study the band's logos over the years, but since Eddie is Tom's personal favorite and his guitar playing idol, it just made sense to go with something more closely related to him.

So I basically bought a box cake mix (in this case pineapple as it is Tom's favorite) and a container of cream cheese frosting.  I took two bowls and scooped out about 1/4 cup to keep white, a one more to color black, and used what was left in the container to color red.  To say I panicked over this process would be an understatement.  Many times I wanted to jump in the car and run to the store and buy fondant just to get it over with and get cleaner lines.  But when you are on a budget, fondant is a luxury purchase.  So I just sat at the table with the food coloring and mixed my heart out until I got the desired black and red.  I'm still shocked over how much food coloring it takes to achieve both colors, and it was a tedious and time consuming process.  But it was still worth the effort and I would do it again.  I then used Wilton tips and piping bags to make the lines.  I'm personally very proud of turning the VH logo into my husband's initials of TH.  It didn't turn out like the practice one I did on paper, but he got a huge kick out of it and it made the whole thing more personal for him.

Almost every piece of cooking/baking equipment and cake decorating tools I own were given to me as gifts over the years.  But if you don't have piping bags or decorating tips you can still achieve most patterns and concept by filling a plastic sandwich bag or freezer bag and snipping off the corner to use as a piping bag.  The point is not to allow yourself to be limited.   It doesn't have to be super fancy, and it is going to be eaten regardless of how it turns out.