A Birthday Cake

Once again, with a child helper standing by, the table in my kitchen was set with mixing bowls, ingredients and...


...a picture book, with a recipe at the back.


As the title of Debra Frasier's A Birthday Cake Is No Ordinary Cake suggests, we're celebrating another birthday in our house - another ride around sun. There are only eight of us, so I know we don't have a birthday every month, but there are times when it feels that way. Even so, a birthday is a birthday, and cake is required.

Or, as Frasier puts it, "...every circle around the sun equals ONE. One what? One birthday cake!"

She then goes on to share a recipe for a very special birthday cake, one that takes an entire year to make, and requires some unique ingredients: 365 sunrises, 12 silver moons, 1 hot summer wind, and 1 cool fall morning, to name a few. We got a late start on our baking, so after a dramatic production of gathering the birthday sunrise into our mixing bowl, we skipped on to the last few, more ordinary, ingredients of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, shortening, butter, vanilla, milk and egg whites.


I don't have permission to share the exact recipe (there is a free, 10 page, extension kit on the publisher's website, here, though) , but that's okay, because although the book and recipe are a lot of fun, and we were thrilled to find the batter mixed together easily, the cake baked up perfectly (we did have to double the frosting recipe - also included in the book in either vanilla or chocolate)...


...and it looked lovely decorated and glowing under candle light...


...we all thought it tasted almost exactly like corn bread, which is strange, because the only corn included in the cake was the play acting involved in gathering a sunrise, and humming happy birthday as we stirred the batter. Other than that, it's a pretty straightforward looking recipe for white cake, so the taste was unexpected. Luckily for us, T (age 14) is a huge fan of cornbread, and offered to eat up all the leftovers.

I'd definitely recommend the book though, my younger girls (ages 5 and 7) especially, got a real kick out of the story line, and the idea of each birthday representing another ride around the sun. But, as far as picture book birthday cake recipes go, Karma Wilson's Whopper Cake remains our hands down favorite.



It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Watcha Making Wednesday at The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M.