January Cake Frenzy!

I have 5 very important people in my life whose birthdays all happen to be in January. My husband's is on the 5th, my sister's is on the 21st, Tagen my daughter is on the 30th, last but definitely not least Boho Rose and my father in-laws are both on the 31st. Out of these 5 My sister Mariah is the only person I didn't make a cake for (she lives almost 1000 miles away in Reno, NV)

For my husband’s cake I made him a Honey Chai tea cake with a Honey ginger cream cheese frosting! OMG it was to die for!!! No pictures for this cake :( but I will give you the link to the recipe! :) It was supposed to be a bundt cake but I used round cake pans instead and I also used a different frosting than what she did.

Honey-Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

1 ½ cups of confectioners’ sugar

½ cup honey

9 ounces of cream cheese at room temp.

½ cup of unsalted butter at room temp.

½ cup of honey (any kind as long as liquid)

½ teaspoon of fresh grated ginger

1 teaspoon crystallized ginger

The cake I made for my father in-law was a homemade German Chocolate cake, it's his favorite! for this I just followed the directions on the German chocolate box which I don't have any more otherwise I would post it! :( He was very impressed though It was the first time he had one made from scratch and he really liked the homemade coconut frosting!! I baked this cake and the one's I needed for Tagen's cake on Thursday night. I think Tagen's was done baking around 1am!

Now on to the fun and hard stuff!! My daughter is OBSESSED with Scooby-Doo so I wanted to make her The Mystery Machine for her 3rd birthday! At first I was going to make it 2-d but at the last min I decided to make it 3-D after finding this blog for a cake decorating contest. The actual cake was a 4 layer carrot cake made from scratch with cream cheese frosting (of course!!)

I made my own out of marshmallows this was also my first time working with fondant. It worked but it was a little too dry and kept cracking but I made it work :( I was up until 4am making all the colors I would need for the 2 cakes. Boy did my shoulders and back hurt when I was done!!

While Rose's cakes baked I put together Tagen's cake. In order to get the shapes right for the van's paint job I found a picture of the Mystery Machine blew it up and then traced the shapes onto wax paper so I could make stencils. I then cut the shapes out of the fondant using an x-acto knife.

Everything went well with the decorating but I had forgotten to do one very important step! I forgot to put dowels in the cake!! So needless to say after all my hard work when we got to Gillette the van looked like Fred had been drinking and driving and ran into a tree!




Let me tell you my heart was crushed when I opened the box to see a wrecked van cake!!! But boy did I learn my lesson on why you dowel a cake!!







Now on to Rose's cake! BohoRose had a mad hatters tea party at the Swan House the day before her birthday. I wanted to make her a cake that matched her party theme, so I made her a green (her fave color) top hat cake! Rose is a Chocoholic so naturally I made her a four layer Chocolate cake! This cake was much harder to get the fondant to drape properly but I made it work and Rose was very impressed! Now I'm just waiting for someone else to have a birthday so I can make a cake! I have been craving the Chai cake I made for Chad! LOL!