Nix9to5

Birthday Cakes, Part 2: Don’t Reinvent the (Tractor) Wheel

// October 13th, 2010 // Children and Babies, Cooking

Well, I finished two practice cakes today and I learned some things:

1.  It’s a good thing I practiced.

2.  When something doesn’t go according to plan, cake-wise, call your genius sister.

For one of the cakes, one little part of it was a total failure, even though I followed directions to do it.  I emailed my sister, the Amazing Amanda*, and told her what the problem was.  Amanda gave me some brilliant suggestions for remedying the problem next time.  The best part is that the Amazing Amanda is so creative that she can figure out a store-bought solution to every problem.  Now, that doesn’t mean she says to just go to the bakery and buy a cake, already.  It means that she can mentally scan through the candy aisle, baked goods aisle, and snack aisle to come up with a solution.

That doesn’t sound as flattering as I mean it, so let me give you a story and some pictures as an example:The youngest child of the Amazing Amanda is only a couple of weeks older than the Bear.  For his 2nd birthday, he wants a tractor theme.  Today, they were having a playdate birthday party, and Amanda wanted to make some cute, individual-sized tractors for the kids to eat.   She searched and searched for images online and couldn’t find anything she liked, so she was forced to invent something on her own.  This is what she came up with:

How precious are those?!  And here is what I mean about her creative genius when it comes to using pre-made items:  Amanda says, “The tractors are made from Twinkies, Oreos of all shapes and sizes, and Laffy Taffy.  We also made ‘haystacks’ [the butterscotch and chow mein noodle kind]–the boys helped with those this morning–and I bought toasted coconut marshmallows for round hay bales.”

The kids apparently loved them, too.  They all followed the birthday boy’s lead in trying to eat them without using their hands:

Don’t you love it?!

Stay tuned for more pictures of the Amazing Amanda’s clever cakes.  If you have any fabulous** homemade birthday cake pictures you’d like to share, let me know.  I’d love to post all your brilliant ideas here.

*My sister Amanda is neither the Simple Saving Savvy Amanda nor the ClipSmART/Frugal Schmugal Amanda.  I’m surrounded by smart, creative Amandas.

**By “fabulous,” I don’t mean perfect.  You saw my slightly-surprised panda.  I just mean cakes you made that you were pretty pleased with–or that made your kids really happy.  Because isn’t that what it’s really all about?