Happy 2nd Birthday Daniel!

My little boy is 2!  And time has flown so very, very fast!  If you read my previous post you got to enjoy hearing about many of Daniel's milestones over the past year so I won't include that here...

The day before Daniel's actual birthday we had a little party for him with just the Grandparents and Great-Grandparents.  Who to invite is such a dilemma because we have such a large family!  So we decided to keep it small this year.  The birthday boy was very excited about his party and especially about having cake!  So much so that I had to not talk about it for the week leading up to the party otherwise I would have constantly been trying to explain to an excited boy why we were not having cake today!

Here are some snapshots of the party - we enjoyed lunch with the grandparents after church and then dug right in to presents and then cake!

The birthday boy on his special day!  He was super excited to have a birthday shirt with a picture of cake on it!

Daniel opens his first gift from Great Grandpa and Grammie the Great - "I've Been Working on the Railroad" book with wheels!  He totally loves this!

Daddy has to read it right away!

Opening presents after lunch - this is one of Daniel's new favorite books - Richard Scarry's "Cars, and Trucks, and Things that Go!"

Daniel opens another book, "Curious George Makes Pancakes", and we promptly sat down and read it right there.  I love how our boy enjoys reading!!

Daniel received his first soccer ball this birthday!  Start 'em early!

When it was time to open gifts from Bua and Abuelo (Josue's parents) we did a Skype video call with Bua so that she could watch Daniel open the gifts.  This is how all video calls with Bua start out - silly faces!

Such a "funny boy!" as Daniel would say!

Daniel received a John Deere tractor apron and various child-sized cooking utensils and baking pans from Grammie and Grandpa.  He loves helping Mommy in the kitchen so this was so perfect!

Curious George tea set from Grammie and Grandpa!

Daniel knew exactly what is was and what to do with it!  I drink many cups of tea per day now!

Blowing out the candles - Daniel got them both all by himself!

VERY excited about eating his inchworm cake!

Quick picture with Mommy and Daddy before we dig into the cake.  Such a wonderful boy we have!

Mmmm, mmmm good!

Having some more tea at the new table from Mommy and Daddy!

Enjoying his bubble mower from Bua and Abuelo before crashing for naptime!

We really had a fun day and I think Daniel really enjoyed it.  At this age the simplest things make a child so very happy.  It was fun to just enjoy a relaxed afternoon and let him have the fun of being the center of everyone's adoring attention!

May God bless the coming year as deeply and more as He has this past one!!  As you remember us please pray that we will honor and glorify God with the way that we raise Daniel.  And that by God's grace we will train him and help him to grow into a Godly boy who understands God's love for him and loves Him back!

The Birthday Cake!

For those of you who are interested in the cake... here it is!

I didn't want to get too complicated with Daniel's cake because I was all caked out from my previous project.  So I decided to do something relatively simple - and yes this really is simple :)

Daniel's cake this year was an inchworm cake.  I got the idea from the Betty Crocker website, they have a lot of great kid's cake ideas that are very easy to do.  They use a lot of candy in their decorations, but since we don't really eat candy I just used icing instead.

Start out with a bundt cake.  I made a lemon pound cake - yummy!

Cut off 1/3 of the cake, cut it in half and use it to make the head and tail on either side of the 2/3 remaining cake which is the hump.  (Sorry I forgot to take a picture without the icing!)

Ice green (It takes a lot of icing to fill in the lumps from the bundt cake!  Oh, well...)

And decorate...  Brown for the dirt/mud along the bottom, yellow feet and then the mouth and eyes.

I particularly liked how the antenna turned out!  The instructions suggested using pretzel sticks for the antenna, but since Daniel was turning two it worked out perfectly to use two candles!

There you have it :)  And one happy child to go along with it!

My latest project!

I thought I would share my latest project with everyone! My cousin Laura recently had a baby shower and I was enlisted to bake the cake! This was a very special event for me because we're expecting at the same time and Laura and I have been very close over the years as she is my only girl cousin my age. She and I were born 7 weeks apart and our children are due 8 weeks apart. :) Laura and Chris are expecting their first child, a little girl, the beginning of April.

So, in planning the shower with Laura's sister-in-laws, we decided to do a "ducky" cake similar to the one I had baked for Daniel's first birthday. However, it was a relatively large shower so we needed more cake than the duck provided so I baked a round base as well.

This was the largest baking project I've undertaken and so it took a LOT of planning and research and preparation! I'll warn you ahead of time - it's gonna be wordy - probably much more than most of you are interested in... But for me this was an important project and one I'm proud of and so I've written the details of what went into it. Here's a look into my work:

Several days before the shower I made the flowers that were to be placed on the cake. The flowers are made with royal icing which dries hard like a piece of candy. This made the flowers so much easier because I didn't have to worry about piping them directly on the cake. I just made a bunch ahead of time and then took the best ones and positioned them on the cake.

The flowers... These were about the size of quarters.

Piping lots of small purple flowers. It's a bit time consuming at the beginning, but totally worth it to not have to pipe them directly on the cake!

The finished flowers with yellow centers piped. They're piped directly onto wax paper and when they are dry they peel right off. Kind like the "dots" candy as one friend compared them to. :)

The two days before the shower I baked the cakes. This is the mold for the ducky cake. You fill the bottom half to almost over flowing with batter and then attach and tie on the top half so that it doesn't pop off during baking. This cake is a Strawberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake - pound cake works well with a molded cake because it is dense and holds its shape well.

With a toddler some of these things take all day and so I really had to work ahead. Daniel was soooooo.... excited about the ducky cake and just cake in general. Though he handled it very well that he didn't get to eat any right away!

This is the first layer of the base. It is a Sour Cream Almond Pound Cake that is a McDowell family (my Mom's side of the family) recipe. This recipe has been used for wedding cakes for many years in my family. It's very moist and rich! As you can see the cake gets a nice brown crust on the top. This had to be cut off to level the cake before stacking.

Day before the shower...ice and decorate the cakes. Here we have the base cake leveled and I've piped a thick ring of icing around the edge to keep my filling from oozing out when I place the second layer on top.

Now the layer is filled with raspberry preserves. I used raspberry because it is a bit tart and helps to balance out the sweetness of the cake!

Here we have the second layer placed and I've crumb-coated the cake (a thin layer of icing to seal in the crumbs - makes putting on the final layer a lot easier!).

Now I've put on the final layer of icing and smoothed it out. Still working on this skill - but truth be told - it doesn't matter too much by the time you get your other decorations on! This cake is done for the day, I was plump tuckered out and frankly ran out of time and so I finished the decorations for the base the day of the shower. Thank goodness my Mom watched Daniel for most of the day or else who knows how much I would have been able to accomplish!

Now moving on to decorating the ducky. You start with the beak and eyes and then move on to the body. The beak is done just with a spatula. The eyes are piped on, whites first and then the blue centers. However, you get the smooth appearance by patting the icing with your finger dipped in cornstarch. A nifty little trick that is really useful! The cornstarch is absorbed into the icing and you are left with a smooth surface, no lines!

Here I'm piping the body with stars. You cover the entire body with stars and then do the wings with a "pull-out" star to give the appearance of feathers. By the way the duck is placed on a cardboard base (cut to size) to make it easy to lift to place on the cake and then easy to remove when you have to cut the cake. This is tedious work, but it looks really great in the end. I like this style of decoration better than simply icing it with a spatula.

And so here you have the finished ducky! Just a few more details to put on to make it look more like a "girl" ducky (since my cousin is expecting a little girl).

Here I've piped on eyelashes and little baby "hair spikes" with a bow to make the duck look more girly. A great idea provided by my cousin (in-law) Deanna. The ducky is now finished! BTW - to get that black icing it works best to start with chocolate icing, that way you don't have to add tons of food coloring! And here I am done for the night!

Morning of the shower - I was up early to work on the base... Just basic shells around the edges and then placing the first round of large flowers. Since the royal icing is hard you just have to pipe a dot of butter cream on the back and then stick them where ever you want on the cake. In the center you can see where I have marked the place for the ducky to go. I also placed 6 dowel rods in the cake to support the weight of the duck.

Here I've finished placing most of the flowers and have also piped the leaves on. The base is now ready to go. I put the ducky cake on the base at the actual location. There was no way I was risking it toppling over on the drive to the location. Especially because of all the curvy and bumpy back roads we had to travel on!

And here you have it folks! The ducky is placed and the cardboard is covered with flowers and leaves to bring the two cakes together nicely.

A close up of the flowers around the edge and base of the duck. Ok - I'm sorry - but I'm just super proud of this :)

About to cut the ducky's head off! Dismantling and cutting the cake was sooooo.... hard after all the work that went into it!!

And, of course, a picture of me with the Mommy-to-be and our bellies!!