Adventures in Cake Baking

Our story begins with a starry-eyed twenty-two year old newlywed.  Yeah, it's me.  A sweet church lady asked me to bake a pound cake for a church social.  With a silent gulp, I agreed.  I'm sure my eyes were round saucers.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, but that pound cake did not rise and was as dry as a brick.  With shame, I walked into the church social with a store-bought pound cake.  I didn't even bother to try to pretend that I made it.  I just handed over the bag.

Fast forward to Andrew's second or third birthday.  By this time, I'd conquered cooking and thought I was ready to tackle cake baking.  I planned to keep it simple and baked a beautiful yellow cake with store bought chocolate icing.  Poor guests.  Little did they know that eating that cake would buy them a one way ticket to Choke City!

I resigned myself to store-bought birthday cakes.  

Now, fast forward to Caden's first birthday party. Inspired by my classmate's beautiful fondant creations, I  thought I would give baking birthday cakes one more shot.  Caden is my last baby, so I knew I would never get to celebrate a first birthday again.  I decided to play for all the marbles!

Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)

Okay, I cheated.  I used a box cake.  But, I did do all of the fondant work on my own with the help of tutorials.

Well, not to be overlooked, Stephen immediately put in his order for a horse cake.  I got a little excited and gave him the whole farm.

Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)

This year, my baby turned two, but at a really bad time for creative cake baking.  It was Easter weekend and we had way too much going on.  So, I kept it sweet and simple and focused on learning how to make chocolate butter frosting from scratch.  I have to admit, homemade icing tastes so much better than anything off the supermarket shelves.  I'm sold!

Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)

The soon to be 4 year old is back on the horse cake kick.  I'm praying he changes his mind...