Cake

It's an end of an era for me and my family. I make the cake for my kids' birthdays until their tenth birthday and my youngest finally turned ten. I normally try to keep this blog mostly techy but in the spirit of "owning my content", I thought I'd do a post to showcase some of the cakes I've made over the years. In the tradition of recipe sites, read my life story first before you get to the actual cakes 😜.

One day as I was talking with a product manager at my 2nd job, I noticed some pictures of various cakes on his screensaver. I asked about them, and he said that he made the birthday cakes in his family as both a hobby and tradition. I remember thinking, "that is a very cool tradition" and later asked my spouse if it's cool if I took that on. She doesn't love baking so she was on board.

I have four children, so I've had a lot of learning over the years in how to make cake. The process has generally gone as follows:

Me: Your birthday is coming up, what kind of cake do you want?

Kid: I don't know.

Me: Not helpful. What things are you into right now?

Kid: describes something that would be very difficult to make into a cake

Me: How would that work as a cake?

Kid: Oh, I'm not sure. I guess do a kitty?

Me: We've done two kitties.

Kid: I'm not sure then.

Me: Alright, I'll figure something out

I've found that the younger the child, the easier the cake. This is why I only do these until they're ten. Eventually they start asking for cakes that would be challenging even for a baking professional, let alone a software engineer that only dabbles in baking (I blame all the baking shows they watch with their mother 😁).

Over the years I've learned so many tips and tricks on how to make a fun cake. I didn't even know how to make my own frosting for the first several. Here is what I've learned over the years:

• Kids will like pretty much any cake if you put a bunch of candy on it.
• Fondant is basically cheating when decorating but buttercream frosting tastes better.
• Rice Krispy treats can act like cake in a pinch.
• Freezing a cake before frosting makes it easier to frost, but it shrinks the cake and makes it a little stale (learned this before discovering what a crumb coat was).
• Homemade frosting tastes better and is cheaper than store-bought frosting.
• Piping buttercream frosting is an art form that takes a lot of practice but looks amazing in the hands of a pro.
• Use heavy cream instead of milk for a creamier frosting.
• Frosting is easier to "get right" when you have a large mixer vs a hand mixer.
• Crumb coats are a thing and they make frosting easier.
• Gel-based food coloring makes better colors (I fail to remember this too much).
• 🌶️ take: Almond-flavored frosting tastes better than vanilla, and it's a shame that it is reserved only for weddings.

Things I still need to learn

• How to make an actual cake from scratch. I prefer box cakes because they're easy, but they're limiting.
• Making flowers, etc. via piping. It's seriously a dark art to me right now.
• Plan further ahead. Coming up with cake ideas the night before is very limiting.
• Probably more things I haven't run into yet.

After the above conversation with my kids, it seems like we land on one of a few kinds of cakes:

• Phone-it-in candy cakes (affectionately called "diabetes cakes")
• Simple, creative cakes
• Challenging, creative cakes

Look, not every cake can be a creative masterpiece. Fortunately, kids are very forgiving when you load the cake up with candy or other sweets. Here are some of my favorites in this category:

When you have a little girl that loves pink, just pink all the things.

The green in here was intended to look like slime. It didn't, so when in doubt, add more candy.

One of the later cakes for this guy. He just wanted a lot of candy on it.

The original "diabetes cake". Started as a Minecraft cake.

Most of these were either a learning stepping stone or just fun and simple.

This... was an intense cake. I could argue that it belongs in the prior category, but I really did intend to make a Mario Kart themed cake.

Drew this freestyle when the kiddo wanted a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" cake.

Should look familiar to Harry Potter fans.

Had the idea to take cake rolls to create a lightsaber. The red is from Fruit Roll-ups.

More lightsaber fun involving Fruit Roll-ups, chocolates, and colored sugar crystals.

Kids were really into Adventure Time at the time (as was I). Loved the Oreo idea and licorice whips make for clean, edible lines.

Not as much candy on this but the design turned out really well.

I made a stencil for this one and dusted in silver sugar crystals. Those candles made for a fairly big flame (which was the intention)!

I really messed up the frosting on this one. If I had known about crumb coats, it would have turned out much better.

My first stab at using fondant. Loved how it was basically edible Play-doh.

Actually got ahead of this one and ordered edible paper butterflies. This is also one of the first times I made my own frosting and hadn't fully dialed in the recipe so it was kind of greasy and difficult to work with.

Effective and simple. This is a "Pusheen" depiction of our cat Millie.

I initially wanted this to be multiple cupcakes with flowers on them but was still having problems with making my own frosting. I did the next best thing and made a giant flower with them. Resourcefulness!

These are the cakes that I'm particularly proud of. Some look better than others but they all stretched my abilities.

This turned out very clean using fondant for the character background, Twizzler twists for the lines, and simply using cookies for the balloons. Slam dunk of a cake!

Inspired by animal cakes my mother made when I was little, colored coconut flakes makes for convincing "fur". I want to say that the eyes were frosted Sno Ball snack cakes.

My favorite Sesame Street cake I made. The crowd-pleasing, two cakes "eating" the cookies just nailed the character.

My first "fondant all the things" cake that also utilized Rice Krispy treats (Kirby's appendages). Having a layer of buttercream underneath made sure this tasted great as well.

This was originally supposed to have a sheer layer of candy glass to recreate the Teen Titan's Tower. It shattered unfortunately while cutting it, hence the cracks. Ambition kind of beat me here.

That whole dress is cake. Had to hollow it out to fit the Barbie in there. I kind of made up the dress design as I went, but I think it went okay 🤷.

My son was really into Rocket League, so I tried to make an accurate depiction of one of the courses. I cut up a so many sour candy strips to make it happen. Wish I could have found a mini soccer ball but the basketball had to do.

I think my daughter called this a "unicat" but was technically a unicorn. The mane still looked elegant despite my inability to pipe flowers.

And here's the last one, an upside-down ice cream "drip cake". Four layers, sheer sides, amazing frosting, and a white chocolate ganache. I still hadn't learned my lesson with trying to make purple with non-gel food coloring though. The ice-cream is a giant cake pop!

While I'm done with official cake baking for birthdays, I still enjoy making them. Now that I'm free from asking kids what they want, I may occasionally find a style I'd like to try and make it. My biggest gripe is I also enjoy eating them which isn't awesome for my waistline 😅. Follow me on the socials to see these future cakes as I make them. If your kids are still little, give this hobby/tradition a shot!