Although my birthday always falls near Thanksgiving, we still manage to find time for birthday cake.  My request this year was for a chocolate cake with pink frosting.  This Chocolate Beet Cake with Beet Cream Cheese Frosting fit the bill perfectly!  The recipe is from Joy the Baker, and she almost rivals Smitten Kitchen for great recipes.

 

 

You might be thinking – “beets…creative!”  But you might be thinking – “beets….yuck!”  Let me assure you that you can’t taste the beets in the cake or the frosting.  They only serve to make the cake moist, and the frosting a bright pink.  It helps to roast and grate the beets a day ahead because that’s really the messy part of the project.  After that, it’s a pretty straightforward two layer cake recipe.

My Mom did the majority of the work for the cake, and had my older nephew help with the frosting.

 

Later he got to decorate the cake with sprinkles, and then it was time for his favorite part, the candles!

With his little brother already in bed, he got to be center stage to help sing and blow out the candles.  Thanks to my family, it was a fun night and a fabulous cake!

For my nephew’s 3rd birthday, the cake team decided to go with a sports theme.  Even though baseball season is winding down, we thought it would be fun to make a baseball cake.  The birthday boy actually got to help pick the flavor of the cake this year and he requested chocolate.  (Actually, he requested “grape cake” first, but I am pretty sure he was imagining a big platter of grapes and not a grape-flavored cake!)

My Mom baked the chocolate cake using the Hershey’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe.  We considered baking the cake in a Pyrex bowl so it would be a half sphere shape, but some Googling revealed that it can be difficult to make sure the center of the cake is adequately cooked without burning the edges.  So we baked two 8″ round cakes, and then used a simple butter and confectioner’s sugar frosting to ’round’ things out a bit.  We used red cookie icing to decorate the cake with the stitching and a “3”.

This may have been our simplest cake project yet, but it was still a great cake and we had fun making it.  And yes, the cake was served with fruit salad which included grapes.

 

 

 

I feel like my blog has been one big party this summer!  We’ll get back to “regular meals” by the end of the week, I promise.  But first, I have to share the story of The Great Train Cake.

The bar for first birthday cakes was set pretty high back with these Monkey Cakes of 2010.  But of course we had to do something different for my youngest nephew.  I am not sure who came up with the idea for a train cake first, but the project was planned with many Google searches, Pinterest surfing, sketches, and long lists on legal sized paper.  But all the details aside, we had a lot of fun.  Hop aboard for the full story, or scroll to the bottom just to see an adorable baby toddler eating cake.

 

 

The Baking

My Mom used Smitten Kitchen’s Best Yellow Layer Cake recipe, and multiplied it by 1.5 to yield a 13″x9″ cake and a 9″x5″ loaf pan.  She baked another 13″x9″ cake using Hershey’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe.  She used one half of Smitten Kitchen’s Two Layer Banana Cake recipe to yield another 9″x5″ loaf pan.  You might be thinking that 1) that’s a lot of math; 2) that’s a lot of baking; and 3) why did they need 3 different types of cake?  My Dad helped a bit with the math, my Mom did the baking over the course of 2 days and stored the layers in the freezer, and yes, we’re a little crazy and wanted some variety in the flavors.

The Decorating

First, we started with a cake board.  It’s important to have a sturdy surface, especially since the cake must be stored in the refrigerator.  We placed the 13″x9″ cakes side by side to form the base layer.  The majority of the cake was frosted with Smitten Kitchen’s Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, but we used canned chocolate frosting for the engine.  We colored the vanilla frosting in small bowls as we went along.

We coated the top and sides of the base layer with the vanilla frosting, and then piped on chocolate icing for the train tracks. The loaf pan of banana cake was cut to form an engine, using this Betty Crocker video as a guide.  The loaf pan of vanilla cake was cut into thirds, to form 3 train cars.  You’ll notice that only 2 of those train cars fit on the cake; sadly, one car had to be left behind in the station.

 

 

My Mom’s kitchen looked like a scene out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.  We had a lot of different ideas on what to use for wheels and other train decor.  In the end, we used generic chocolate sandwich cookies for wheels.  We used Twizzlers to outline the top of the train car.  Other candy we used includes M&M’s, Junior Mints, and peach rings.

 

It was a hot August night, and the frosting was melting, so we put it in the refrigerator at this point.  It just fit.  The next day, we did some touch-up work with frosting, and added a “1”.

 

 

The Serving

Finally, it was time to bring out the cake and serve it.  We all sang “Happy Birthday” and he got some help blowing out the candle.  Note that my sister removed the pieces of candy which could be a choking hazard before placing the engine in front of him.

 

All he wanted to do was stick his fingers in the frosting, which he decided he liked.  I am not sure he even got to any cake!

 

The cake project was a lot of fun, and we’ll remember it for a long time!

Sometimes it’s tough to be a food blogger.  I have to ask difficult questions like, “can brownies be too fudgey”?  Because these are the most fudge-like brownies I’ve ever made.  I used Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate Chips, cocoa powder, and Trader Joe’s 72% cacao Dark Chocolate.  That’s some serious chocolate power!  These brownies not only have a rich texture, but they also have an interesting flavor with the addition of crystallized ginger and sea salt.

I was not entirely sure that I was happy with how the recipe turned out.  Of course, that didn’t stop me from bringing them to a party.  It also didn’t stop me from eating the brownie edges.  (You know, the pieces that weren’t suitable to bring to the party.)  These are not classic brownies, but rather like squares of ginger and sea salt fudge.  Once your taste buds know what to expect, they’ll be happy indeed.