It began thirteen years ago now, with a little caterpillar cupcake cake for a tiny boy turning just one year old. This year, it was a 13 cake for a much older boy who is now, officially, a teenager. I'm not quite sure where all the years in between one and thirteen years old have gone but I know that every year we celebrate the day he was born with a homemade birthday cake. It's tradition!
There has been a ladybug cake, complete with freckly dots, and an echidna ice-cream cake with chocolatey spikes and a sleepy moon cake for a boy who loved the moon when he was two. Here are some of the special cakes that have held my boy's birthday candles over his years so far ...
The very first birthday cake I made for my boy.
For a boy who loved the moon!
A rather red ladybug with freckly dots!
An ice-creamy echidna with chocolatey spikes.
A photo cake for seven!
A simple 11!
12 candles to blow out on this cake.
12 candles to blow out on this cake.
My smaller boy would happily leaf through the pages of our batter-splattered birthday cake book, the ever-reliable Women's Weekly Kids' Birthday Cakes, and take his time choosing the cake for his happy birthday day. He'd then ask, "Can you make this one?" Now he is older though, he presents me with his own hand-drawn cake plans and asks the same question. I usually respond with a question of my own along the lines of "Just how many Kit-Kats do you want me to fit on this cake?"
This year's birthday cake plan.
A cake for a brand new teenager.
Once the candles were blown out, it took very little time for the cake to be demolished. Whether to have a slice with white chocolate or darker chocolate icing was quite the choice! The birthday boy himself requested a slice with both!
It does take time to make a birthday cake, to cream that butter and sugar and fold in that flour and melt that chocolate, but a homemade cake also has that one very special extra ingredient...love.
Meg
