Just a "Couple" of Birthdays

Both my soon-to-be sister-in-law and my brother-in-law celebrated their 30th birthdays within a month of each other.

For Katia's birthday, Jay invited us along with some of her good friends out for a Brazilian dinner at a place in L.A. called Bossa Nova. Because we were going to a restaurant I thought a simple cake would do just great, it is easy to transport and it's just a very classic way of celebrating a birthday.

I wish I would have taken a picture of the inside of the cake as was a two layer round cake but I didn't. Again, I used a chocolate chip batter but instead of a vanilla based frosting, I used a chocolate fudge with mini chocolate chips. I filled the space betweem the two layers of cake (though the cake may look small it was actually 2 layers)with this frosting and also used it to frost the outside of the entire cake. For the decorative design, I used a vanilla frosting and red and blue food coloring to add color. For my future blogs I will put up the number of the frosting tips I used.

When I finished the cake I really liked the blue frosting on the brown fudge. I think it adds a refreshing splash of color to the pink, white and brown.

THE FOOTBALL CAKE

My mom gave me the bunt cake pan in the shape of a stadium! It is so cute and SO perfect for my brother-in-law, who like my husband, is a HUGE football fan. The best thing about this cake is that it looks like it takes a really long time to make, but it is SO quick and easy!

For this cake I used a chocolate batter. The cooking time on this cake said to bake it way longer than it really should be. So instead of giving you a time for bunt cakes, I think you should just test periodically. For the field, I took green cardstock and drew a Raider's logo and 30 yardline marks (it was his 30th). I taped that down to the pan I was going to place the cake on. On top of the cardstock I used double stick tape to tape down plastic wrap to not only keep away any moisture from the marker ink on the paper, but to also create a glossy sheen to the field. Once the cake was cooled and removed from the pan I centered it over the "field". The frosting used was just a simple vanilla frosting dyed with red, green and blue food coloring. For the people I used a simple round frosting tip for the bodies and a smaller round frosting tip for the heads (again, in the future I will put the number of the frosting tips down). The stadium is piped with a small round frosting tip and the extra frosting was used to fillin the gaps where the cake met the serving dish. I made 4 Raider/personalized birthday flags with paper and toothpicks to put at each corner of the stadium.

Jay said he really liked this cake, however, I think it was our 10 year old cousin, Jeffrey and his buddies Trevor, Devner and Jackson who enjoyed it the most :)

*Another great thing about this cake is that it is easy to cut and serve. Because it is essentially a ring, it make it super easy to distribute. Not that many people really care about this aspect of cake, I just found it quite nice!