A Cake for a Friend

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Jennie, asking her if she was ever going to come to visit me in Milwaukee. She lives three hours away and has been busy looking for a job, and most recently, helping out while her parents' house is under construction. All this while recovering from having major hip surgery after a nasty fall almost two years ago. After telling her that Lucas had a week off of school for spring break, and that Brian was taking that week off of work, she said that sounded good and she'd be coming to visit on Thursday and staying through the whole weekend. Needless to say, I was thrilled about having one of my best friends coming to visit me (and my kids were even more excited about getting to see Miss Jennie again), so I began planning. I had some activities planned, as well as the menu of all of the yummy meals I was going to prepare while she was here. Then, I posted pictures of my Easter cake and she made a comment about how I needed some cake testers - you know, for quality control purposes. Well, after seeing that, and knowing everything that she has gone through in the past two years, I just had to make a cake for her. Something simple, but heartfelt and as beautiful as she is.

The cake itself is yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and filling, decorated with some of the royal icing roses that I had made a week before (and was able to use up some of the blue flowers that I had made last year, since blue is her favorite color and all.)

It was great to see you, Jennie, and I look forward to seeing you again soon :)

Happy Easter!

For Easter, I volunteered (as I did last year) to make the cake for my family's gathering on Sunday. Honestly, I've been thinking about this cake, at some point or another, for the past year. At this time last year I had just finished my decorating basics cake class, so I hadn't known how to make all of the lovely flowers that one would associate with the Easter season. When I learned how to make them a few weeks later, I got so excited about making my next Easter cake (especially since I learned how to make lilies!)

Well, fast forward several months, and there I was, with several bags of royal icing in assorted colors, and I suddenly came to the realization that I hadn't made a single flower in a whole year. Most, if not all of my cakes since then have been decorated with either cartoon characters or fondant cut-outs. So out came my flowers and cake design book, my flower nail templates, and I got to work basically re-teaching myself how to make all of these gorgeous flowers. I think they all turned out pretty good.

The cake itself was made with an old family recipe - a yellow carrot cake with lemon curd filling. After frosting it (and fighting with lemon curd that desperately wanted to escape!) I decorated the sides with basketweave and arranged a pile of flowers on top. Very yummy and something that the Easter bunny would undoubtedly approve of!

Happy Easter everyone!