Today I share with you cake. Two* cakes, actually. Two cakes I made to celebrate Liam’s birthday and my niece, Quinn’s birthday. I love cake. But I especially love good, out-of-the-ordinary cake. Something more interesting that your usual boxed cake (mostly because I like to make life harder on myself). Last year, inspired by my friend, Keri, I used the frozen buttercream transfer method to make a Lightning McQueen cake for Liam’s 4th birthday. While not perfect, I was still thrilled with how it turned out and so was a certain 4-year-old.
Liam asked for another Lightning cake this year and I had to divert him to something else, specifically a rainbow cake (because I wanted to make one). And for Quinn I thought something chocolaty was in order. Because Quinn’s little one can’t eat eggs, I found two recipes with nary an egg in them.
The first for the rainbow cake is easy-peasy (aside from the whole complication of dividing the batter into six bowls and mixing with food coloring). You buy a bow of white cake mix and add a can of lemon-lime soda (a.k.a., Sprite). And bake. For the rainbow, that’s another story – I followed the directions on this website. I will tell you that the cake took FOREVER to bake. But it was so pretty:
Quinn’s cake was from this recipe. But I baked it in a bundt pan (I cannot say bundt without thinking of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” anyone else?). And then I topped it with chocolate ganache. Hello there, handsome. (The rainbow cake had a chocolate ganache and oreo filling to make it yummier and the instant pudding/whipped topping frosting from the original recipe – only with the full sugar pudding and only reduced fat store-brand whipped topping.)
Are you hungry yet? (she asked with a wicked grin)
*I realize I actually talked about five cakes but when I started this post, I was only going to show you the two recent cakes but then I remembered I could download pictures from FB to show you the others and then I didn’t want to go back and redo the beginning. Instead I spent my time typing up this paragraph. You’re welcome.
This post is linked up with Jill at Diaper Diaries.