My birthday cake!

We took a whirlwind trip around the island for my birthday, but no birthday is complete without cake!  I make the chocolate cake, and brought the frosting.  Jeff even frosted it for me in the hotel room.   I'm so lucky.

Independence Day

I make an American flag cake every year, and this year I wanted to make the full 13 stripes.  I really went back and forth about doing white cake and red cake layers, or just red cake layers with white frosting in between.  I finally decided on just red cake and white frosting because I am baking in a toaster oven after all.  I sent it in to Jeff's work, and they ate half, and we'll eat the other half.  The cake was Sweetapolita's Rainbow Doodle Cake base, just dyed red and blue, and the frosting is Kara's SMBC.  I had big plans for the outside decorations, but when I finished stacking it at midnight, I decided to just put a rustic spin on it instead :)  Next year will be all 13 layers of cake, white and red cake, and some fancy decorations around the outside.  Next year I won't have a 3 month old to entertain, so I'll have more time, yeah right.

Jeff's Birthday

Jeff, oh Jeff.  He gives me free reign on his birthday cake design to try something Ive been wanting to do.  I love watching different decorating techniques, and the kids usually want something specific, and I can only send in so many cakes to his work, they already hate me.  So Jeff allows me to practice something I've been dying to try on his cake.  He's not a big cake lover anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter to him.

This year, I wanted to try the newest thing I've been seeing a lot of lately, succulents.  I love succulents, I have a pot with several out on my patio.  So I decided to go for it.  Plus it's kind of masculine looking, I didn't want to give him a ruffled, rose birthday cake, not that he would mind.  

So I did a 6" chocolate (his fav) with vanilla bean SMBC, just a rustic pattern on the outside and topped it with buttercream succulents.  I piped most of the succulents earlier and froze them, then arranged them on top.  Then I filled in with other succulents, and put the finishing touches on.  This actually ended up being one of my favorites to date.

He was pleased too :)