Double Duty

For any of you who know me, you know that I love to bake cakes. Well, I don't necessarily love the baking, but I love the decorating! I'm starting to like the baking too, as I learn to be more patient. Before, I just wanted to hurry and get the cake made so I could decorate it, ya 'know? It would be like a sketch artist to have to make their paper before they could actually sketch something. But I am now seeing the beauty in the actual baking part of it and it helps that I have some fantastic tried and true recipes. I skip the whole "from scratch" concept and just "doctor up" cake mixes with recipes from the cake doctor, Ann Byrn. Not because I'm totally opposed or scared to bake from scratch, but because these doctored cake mixes are sooooo good!! I take a lot of care in to how the cake actually tastes as well as looks because people don't want to eat dry, tasteless cakes with frosting that tastes like a stick of butter dipped in sugar. (That's how I feel about grocery store bakery cakes). The cakes actually taste like they were made from scratch but are super easy. My favorite is her "Darn Good Chocolate Cake" which is made from a Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix and has chocolate chips in the batter. Yum! I love to pair it with a whipped chocolate ganache filling and whipped cream frosting. So good! That's exactly what I did yesterday for our Little Flowers party. And for those who don't like chocolate, I also made a vanilla yogurt cake made with, you guessed it, vanilla yogurt! It was so moist and delicious, another wonderful recipe from The Cake Mix Doctor.
This weekend I will be making a cake for my Nana's 80th birthday. She loves strawberries and her favorite dessert is Strawberry Shortcake. So, the obvious would be to make a strawberry cake. I'm using a plain cake mix but adding fresh strawberries, coconut and pecans. Wanna guess where I got the recipe? From the Cake Mix Doctor, of course. I hope it's delicious!
Here's my Little Flower cake. I was running late for the party (who, me?) and put the flowers on when we got there, so it's a bit sloppy looking. But the girl's loved it. Chatterbox helped put the flowers on and did a great job! And here she is with her certificate of completion.


Having to make two cakes in one week while trying to manage a household and take care of a 5, 3 and 1 year old who has an earache, along with many other things happening in the week can be a bit stressful to say the least! (Yes, I actually offered to make these cakes. But when I said I'd do the Little Flowers, I didn't realize it would be the same week as Nana's party) And may even make you a little crazy and you'll find yourself doing things like this to all your cake ingredients:
I'll let you know how Nana's cake turns out.