wordless wednesdays: birthday cakes

I feel like a proud mother.  You know the kind – they look down at their children and simply beam.

That’s how I feel.

I am beaming.  And it’s because of this:

And this:

Seriously.  So proud.

Don’t you think both cakes look pretty?

Emily and I were asked to make and decorate a  birthday cake for friends of friends (thank you Isabelle for recommending us!).

After some discussions we decided on two cakes – one lemon and one carrot (they couldn’t decide which of the two they prefered – I thought one of each would be perfect!).  And so – out came my lemon cake recipe – my twist on it this time was to include some freshly made lemon curd into the buttercream frosting.  The second cake was my carrot cake – always popular; this time we decided to use raisins instead of the walnuts (no need to worry about allergies), and cover it in cream cheese buttercream … and then cover the sides with some flaked coconut.

Cakes made – buttercreams made – time for some decorating.

That’s where Emily came in.  As always – I showed Emily some ideas I had had and she was able to execute them.  Then when it came time to figure out how we would pipe the lettering, my friend Chloé offered up the idea of tempering chocolate and using that rather than buttercream piping (merci Chloé!!!).

First up – the lemon cake with lemon curd buttercream

Emily then quickly got to work on the carrot cake with cream cheese buttercream and flaked coconut

And that my friends is how we ended up with these cakes.