Kathy's Cakes

Today is my uncle's 60th birthday! I wanted to make him a cake as a little surprise. I was inspired by the cake  that I got from Carlo's Bakery a couple weeks ago. I made two 6 inch rounds of yellow cake and then made chocolate buttercream frosting .  I like the 6" size, as 2 sticks of butter (I reduced the recipe a bit) in the frosting is a nice amount to frost and decorate. Instead of using all regular cocoa powder, I used mostly dark cocoa powder. Ideally it is nice to frost the cake soon after baking, which I did here, as it locks in the moisture of the cake.  Frosting layer in between the 2 cake rounds. Then I frosted it all. Here is the utensil I used to make rings around the side of the cake. I had never tried this before and it was fun. I wouldn't have been able to do it very successfully without the round turntable plate that the cake was on. After adding those rings on the sides, I just added the bottom layer of shells, and wrote his name...

Happy Birthday to me! I had planned on my birthday cake this year to be from Carlo's Bakery at the Mall of America. I went to the mall today for Toddler Tuesday with the kids and of course stopped at the bakery. Since my birthday is in a couple days this was great timing for me to get my cake. I had just asked for a vanilla cake with fudge frosting. I actually didn't know how it was decorated until I opened the box at home. I was happy. It is a 7" round. The cake was so moist and dense. Yum. And the frosting was so thick. The cake itself was super heavy.  The green frosting was buttercream and was fabulous.