Saturday, June 13, 2015

Two Birthdays, Three Cakes

Not a bad ratio, huh?

Today was Mom's birthday so we went on the Enchanted Gardens of Northwest Denver Tour (benefiting the Conflict Center) and toured Proctor's Garden (benefiting Denver Dumb Friends League). Clarity spent the day with Daddy and went to the Mini Maker's Faire at DMNS.


Since we were going to be out in the sun all day, I started Balsamic Roast Beef Dip Sandwiches in the crockpot in the morning. This was a new recipe and is going into the regular rotation. It was extremely good.

Now on to the cake - Southern Coconut Cake, also a new (now beloved) recipe. Delicious. FYI if you try it, I didn't bother to use cake flour and ran out of coconut flavoring. The cake only ended up with 2t and the frosting didn't have any. I did use coconut milk instead of regular milk in the buttercream frosting. Used organic sweetened small flake coconut on the outside and didn't toast it. Still turned out plenty coconutty.



At the end of May, Clarity's 2nd birthday came and we had our "small family get together". Over 20 adults and 8 kids for our family parties now. Love it! That many people called for two cakes because running out of cake is a birthday disaster. 



Raspberry-Laced Vanilla Cake has raspberry liqueur in the buttercream frosting instead of milk. This is a very good idea.
Chocolate strawberry cake was this frosting  (used semisweet chocolate chips) and some random chocolate dump cake recipe. I frosted the bottom layer then added a couple cups of strawberries, lightly mashing about half of them and adding the rest chopped. I frosted the bottom of the second layer before putting it on to keep the cake from soaking up strawberry juice. After frosting the cake, I decorated with some more sliced strawberries. It worked well. The strawberries were sweet enough without any added sugar and the frosting also wasn't over sweet.

Other birthday pictures...



(Aunt Pauline has made each of the girls a beautiful quilt. She brought Juniper's over at Clarity's party. It's the "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" jump rope rhyme - love it!!!)