Joelle and I decided to bake Tianne a birthday cake. Betty Crocker hasn't visited Nairobi in quite sometime so we had to bake it from scratch... but we were ready for the challenge. We strolled on down to my friend, Ruth's, house to get a recipe for a yummy cake. (Whenever I need a recipe, I normally knock on her door before opening my cookbook :) ). She gave us an easy recipe for an egg less chocolate lover's cake... perfect! We also bought ingredients for homemade chocolate butter cream frosting. We whipped up the cake batter, had it taste-tested by an eight year old who declared "It tastes dusty.... oh wait, no, my hands are just dirty." :) We popped it in the oven then headed to see a surprise that this 8 year old wanted to show us. He had found a little baby bird in a nest! This is a picture of him "singing" to it to comfort it.. how cute!
So we then headed back to my house to take the cakes out of the oven and to whip up the frosting. The cakes turned out great and the frosting... well, not so much. I couldn't get the right consistency so I grabbed my bowl of frosting and ingredients and headed down toward Ruth's house to have her fix the damage. It took a few quick tricks to make it into real, yummy frosting.. the way frosting is supposed to look!
Then, things got interesting. I present to you....
"7 easy steps to make a Birthday cake garden."
1) First, follow directions carefully.... don't forget to grease the pan. Seriously, don't.
2) Secondly, if you did forget to grease the pan well, the cake will stick to the pan, breaking into a million yummy pieces the second you try to flip it over.
3) Mix up your frosting... this will be the amazingness and your "glue" to your Birthday cake garden.
4) Spread the frosting all over the cake top... its ok if pieces come up onto the frosting... for once, that is really ok!
5) Chop the cake up into even more little pieces. Add chopped cake to a pretty bowl. Mix, making sure that the frosting and the cake are mixed evenly.
6) Add pretty flower decorations and candles.... tada!
7) Present to the Special birthday person as if what you are presenting them is exactly what you were aiming for in the first place....they will just think you are creative and love coming up with your own recipes. (You must be very confident in this step... if you aren't, then the birthday person might catch on that this Birthday cake garden was a direct result from you goofing up on their birthday cake).
*** Incase you didn't catch the sarcasm... this was a complete goof up on my part. But when you are in Africa, you can't quite run to the store and get another cake mix and whip a perfect cake up in 30 mins. You have to use some creativity with what you have! However, Tianne thought it was amazing, cute, and tasted wonderful on top of a scoop of ice cream. I'd have to agree :)
Happy Birthday, Tianne!
1 comments:
I love it! We should publish this recipe, it looks amazing, like something out of Martha Stewart's magazine!
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