April is a big Birthday month in my family. My husband, my two children, my mother and my uncle are all born in April. Since four of those people live in my house or next door(my mother), in this house, April showers brings cake, and lots of it!
I know April is long past, but I hadn't had a chance to post two of the fun cakes from this year. For my son's 6th b-day he wanted a surprise cake. He requested " vanilla cake with different sized chocolate pieces in it, whipped cream, strawberries and buttercream" (the design was the surprise part, and my choice, which was cool, cuz I was trying to figure out how I might handle the possibility of an underwater diver cake with out using a lot of food coloring which I generally don't use (see one exception below on the petit fours).
So, for his party it was a crocodile cake, he wanted to put the strawberry scales on the back, and since it was really hot out, we put the whipped cream on the side so we didn't have to refridgerate this gigantic cake.
For the actually day of his birthday which falls on the same day as my mothers birthday, I made them petit fours. both of their names start with the letter "A". There were many fillings. My favorite was the passion fruit jam I brought home from the farmers' market in Amsterdam, along with dark chocolate ganache layered between a light buttermilk cake. Yum!! (Sorry the light in these pictures isn't great, so much for late night picture taking!)
Believe it or not, I added some whole grain flour and almond flour to the cake, and reduced the sugar to improve the nutritional value just a touch, and no one knew the difference. Still, it was a lot of sweet cake, but the little petit fours made the day feel special. We did eat some delicious, non-sweet food too, check out this humongous artichoke!!
Another fun cake I made for his 3rd and again for his 5th b-days' was a dirt pile cake, it was a huge hit with marzipan worms wiggling out of the "dirt" (actually chocolate cookie crumbs).
Made any cool cakes lately? Comment below!
ohhh i wish i was there to eat those petit fours!
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