Alex's birthday

My little girl is 14 and.....not so little anymore. I won't go into the bizarreness of having a 14 year old all of a sudden but I will go into the horror of making birthday cakes. I made my first cake when Alex was 1 year old and it was very ridiculous and took me approx 5 hrs. I still have the cake pan and I am going to scan a pic on here as soon as I get organized. It was one of those pans from the bulk barn with Happy Birthday engraved bubble style on the bottom of the pan. I made the batter from scratch and then for the first time learned how to pipe a cake on that very cake. I did about 4-5 different colors which also means 4-5 different piping bags. I invited my best friend and her 6 month old over for the occasion and even let Alex dive right in while sitting in her highchair (this wasn't easy since I wanted to frame the cake and save forever). The cake was actually really impressive - meaning I was impressed with myself. This was the beginning of a bad habit and I still to this day insist on making both my kids a cake on their day. I always curse myself halfway through and can't believe I'm doing this again but they are always somehow impressed and foolishly think that I'm kinda talented at this. I'm not but still I can't help it.

This was a 3 layer chocolate cake I made for Jo's 8th birthday....tasted great but looked like a big pile of elephant poop!

Because Josee' bday is Oct 14th, I often make her something to take to school with a Halloween theme. The cookies were for her 10th and the muffins were for her 11th with 'lollies' on top in Australia.

These were for her class this year - her 12th

Not impressive looking but sinful pumpkin cheesecake that the boy always requests

A half chocolate and half vanilla cake for Alexs 9th

This cake was a 3 layered chocolate cake with each section decorated in colored chocolate candies usually used for moulds for Alex' 10th. The kids loved it because it was crunchy on top.

Alex 13th balloon cake

Since Alex' birthday fell on the weekend before she was to have her friend over I made her 2 cakes. The first one was a layer of oreo cookie crumbs, chocolate icecream, vanilla cake and candy icing, it was so good. The 2nd was the guitar cake she asked for which I simply cut out from a large sheet cake baked on a cookie sheet. The strings are licorice and the tuners are large fishies and rolos crackers. The cake looked cool but.....it was yucky. I ended up throwing most of it out. It's ok though, Alex was happy.