Busy Bakers

CAKE DONUT: We're still cranking out about one cake a month for Birthday Dreams. Recently, we signed up for a request from an 8 year old whose birthday party theme was "Donuts." Interesting. We called Birthday Dreams to ask how literal that request was. Did the birthday girl really want donuts instead of a cake? It turns out that she actually wanted a cake. OK, we can deal with that.

I went on Amazon and found there are actually a number of silicone molds available for oversized donuts. I ordered a couple (not sure which one I'd like best). We went for the bigger one when they arrived.

We used our standard chocolate cake recipe and filled the mold twice, producing two donuts about 9-10 inches across. We also baked a third layer in a standard cake pan, to act as a 'plate' of sorts for the donuts. We iced the plate in light blue, because that was the birthday girl's favorite color.

We stacked our two donuts one atop the other, first icing each one with some royal icing to make it look more like a decorated donut.

Everyone knows that sprinkles make any donut better, so we carefully spread multi-colored sprinkles atop the donuts.

We toyed with making smaller, companion donuts to go with, but weren't happy with them. We thought the big donuts looked good by themselves.

CJ and Annabelle were happy to make the reject donuts disappear.

A couple days later we took on a different, pretty big baking project. Kennedy had a bake off at school and wanted some help with it. He wanted something meant to impress, so if you're like me, your mind might go to Elvis. :)

I suggested we go with three different kinds of cupcakes, inspired by different iterations of Elvis.

During his '68 Comeback special, Elvis was smokin' hot. So we made dark Devil's Food cupcakes complete with heat from chili powder. They were topped with a homemade marshmallow meringue, and spicy Cinnamon Imperials on top. 

The Aloha from Hawaii cupcakes were coconut cake and buttercream, with some macadamia nuts for good measure. They were topped by an edible orchid to represent the leis Elvis wore in Hawaii.

Annabelle made adorable bejeweled custom cupcake wrappers for each one, to mimic Elvis' iconic white jumpsuit.

                             

Last but not least were the Viva Las Vegas cupcakes. Wrapped in gold foil, they were delicious banana cupcakes topped with crunchy peanut butter, then covered in a a browned butter buttercream and topped with a malted milk ball. Fantastic!

STOWAWAYS: Enough about baking, let's talk about bees. Recently, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about a program in Wisconsin that asks residents to stow their mowers away for the month of May to allow bees to gather pollen from the flowers of dandelions and clover in the springtime. 

It sounds like a great idea. I hope it catches on around the country.