Day 77 - Birthday Cake

Today focused on cakes.  I'll be the first to admit I am not good at cakes.  I love to decorate them but baking them challenges and/or frustrates me to no end.  Today had some good cakes and some not so good.

For Grant's base cake I made a raspberry limeade cake and his stand up duck cake was a nice pound cake.  Clark's base cake is a chocolate cake with a roll-up vanilla sponge cake for the crayons.

I didn't fluff the butter/sugar combo enough on the limeade cake so ended up making another one (much better - amazing what proper mixing can do).  The duck cake mixed up well but somehow the oven shut off in the middle of baking.  It looks OK but I am concerned about what it will cut like - oh well we have plenty of cake so I am going to go ahead and decorate it if this one ends up for our family later that's fine it can freeze and be eaten later or used with strawberries and syrup to give more moisture.

Clark's chocolate cakes fell but I think I can selvage them.  Have never tried sponge cakes before but they rolled up OK.  We'll see how they taste.  I had to cut the edges off to roll them up and Clark liked the cake "strips."

Well at least I got lots of practice - however, still don't know about entering any cakes.  I must say a big thanks to my guys though!  For Mother's Day they gave me a new beater for my KitchenAid stand mixer that has special blades that scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl - so worth every penny!  Simply amazing how much better that beater works!