An Easy Birthday Cake and An Easy Easter Snack

My husband's family has most of their birthdays in April which happen very often at Easter time. So, sometimes we celebrate both making the month just a little extra busy. This past weekend we had my father-in-law's birthday on Saturday and Easter on Sunday and in 2 weeks will be my husband's and his mom's (on the same day) and his brother's.

Since my Doll Cake was such a hit at my daughters birthday party I wanted to make one for my father-in-law. My daughter was eager to help and I was limited on time so I decided we needed something simple. This cake was only going to be 2 layers but I recently purchased very nice, heavy-duty Wilton non-stick cake pans which were 9" round instead of the 8" I originally had. The layers looked rather short especially since I was going to write all of the terms of endearment for him around the sides. The quick cake become a longer adventure just by baking another layer to allow the space for writing. I made the usual buttercream icing but I didn't have enough to add some extra elements like I had planned and I was running behind. My daughter had picked out Jelly Belly jelly beans to put on the cake. We had thought of spelling out Happy Birthday with them but it just wasn't going to work. She came up with the idea of placing them around the cake for a border. Pretty clever for a six year old I think. She wanted to help by putting polka dots with the blue icing but she still doesn't quite have the pressure correct on the decorating bag. We are going to have to make a practice cake for her in the future. Anyway, it wasn't quite what I had imagined and it took waaay longer than it should have but everyone loved it especially when it came to the eating part.

My next experiment was for Easter Day. My husband bought this huge box of chocolate Rice Krispies thinking our daughter would eat them since she likes both chocolate and regular Rice Krispies. Wrong! Now what do we do with them. The box was really big. My husband had wanted to take something else to his sister's who was holding this years celebration including the aforementioned birthday but with the cake I didn't want anything too involved. I have various cake pans and I have always wanted to try doing the Rice Krispie treat thing in one of them so voila we made a Rice Krispie Easter egg with my Wilton Egg Cake Pan. Unfortunately a plain brown egg looks like a big brown blob. So we make a stop on the way to her house for some ready made icing tubes and did a quick egg decorating for a yummy treat for all the kids (except for mine - she doesn't like Rice Krispie treats either).

Hope everyone had a great weekend especially if you were celebrating any holidays. They can be a lot of work but they are so much fun to be a part of making the hard work worth every minute of it.