Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Let them eat cake! Or cookies and pie.

A very sweet little boy, one of my great nephews, turned four this past week and the family celebration was Sunday. When asked what kind of cake he wanted (decoration, not flavor), he wanted a baseball cake. On a recent trip to Michael's with a 40% coupon, I found a Wilton cake pan that make a ball shaped cake. The layer cake pans sit on a ring to hold them level while they bake.
The cake rises over the rim of the pans and has to be leveled with a serrated knife to give you two flat surfaces for the middle of the cake.
Here are the trimmed layers cooling.
A slice is taken off on layer to provide a flat bottom to the cake. I put frosting on the cut side and inverted it onto a cake cardboard. The icing holds the cake in place. If I were serving this at home, I would have used a pretty plate, but this cake was hitting the road and going to the birthday boy's house.
I didn't get the icing perfectly smooth and I took the lazy way out and used purchased gel for the stitching. The cake was a hit despite these shortcomings. This shape can also be made into a basketball, golf ball, billiard ball, bowling ball, soccer ball, tennis ball, and so on.

There are enough relatives to require two cakes if I'm not using a larger pan. I don't mind making two and usually switch out the flavors. In this case, one cake was yellow batter, the other chocolate. The space to the right of the greeting was where I intended the candles to be placed.
At the cake supply store on my trip to buy cake boards and boxes, I saw these sugar mold baseballs and knew the birthday boy and his cousins would love them. I bought them and baseball mitt candles.


Alex's cousin turned 4 two months ago. He was the recipient of the skateboard cakes. In this picture the boys are picking out which specific sugar mold baseballs they want before Alex blows out the candles.


My brother-in-law, Alex's grandpa, isn't fond of cake and since Sunday was also Easter, I made one of my frequent holiday pies, a lemon meringue. My husband returned from a week long business trip Sunday morning and his welcome home gift was chocolate chip cookies with pecan pieces in them.

It has really smelled good in my house lately, but I am about to drop into a sugar coma.

Carrot or celery stick, anyone?

1 comment:

SmilingSally said...

Those cakes would cause any boy's eyes to pop! May I join your family? Will you adopt me?