jamie's strawberry birthday cake

i think jamie and i have a new tradition for our birthday weeks. 

whoever is celebrating their birthday gets to stay in bed when the kids wake up in the morning and the other person gets the kids up. 

for the entire week preceding your birthday. 

i liked it when jamie did it for me so i did it for him (and now i'm ready to lie in bed a little longer tomorrow morning!)

today jamie turned 30.

i'm no longer in my 30's without him.

hurrah!

he didn't ask for much, but upon my questioning him, he requested a strawberry cake.

strawberry it is, babe.

ingredients:

1 3/4 cups sugar

1 pacakge (85 g) strawberry jello

1 cup butter, softened

4 eggs (room temperature)

3 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1 cup milk, room temperature

1 tbsp vanilla

1/4 cup straberry puree/jam

prehead oven to 350F. Butter and flour pan size of choice. i have limited options here so i chose my oval glass pan.

in a medium bowl or measuring cup, combine and stire the milk, puree/jam and the vanilla. set aside.

sift and whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl and set aside.

cream the sugar, jello and butter on medium speed until light and fluffy - about 5 minutes.

add the eggs, one by one, mixing well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.

add the wet and dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating between wet and dry. try not to overmix.

fill your pan(s) with batter and bake for 30-40 minutes - although if you are going with smaller pans, you will need to bake for less time. check your cake(s) at 20 minutes and once you feel it's almost ready, set the timer for 2 minute intervals.

let cool on racks for 10 minutes before loosening edges with a knife.

happy birthday to the love of my life, my best friend, fellow sojourner on this crazy adventure called life and the father to my children. 

here's to our 30's!

Jude's laid-back birthday party

I decided to keep things low-key and relaxed for Jude's birthday party. seeing as we'd be in someone else's house, I wouldn't have any of "my" things and not really a large place to host our families, I decided it would be better to just chill at the beach.
and so a week ago we did.

and it was awesome. and relaxing. and a lot of fun. and exactly the way birthday parties should be.
don't get me wrong, I've done the themed birthday party and there's a part of me that enjoys all the details and planning but this was definitely not the time to do one of those parties.
it was a time to celebrate Jude, enjoy some good food and hang out with family.
so we set up a table, some blankets, camping chairs in the shade near the beach and tied some balloons to a huge tree.
then we did cake and ice cream as soon as everyone arrived so that it wouldn't all melt before we had a chance to enjoy it.

Jude loved singing and blowing out his candles and he insisted that he was in fact, not two, but three and a HALF.
funny kid.

my awesome photographer sister took a bunch of pictures of the day since I left my camera back at the house (which really wasn't that far, but it was nice to not worry about getting "the" shot and just enjoying the moment).

my favourite shot of the day. 

Noah and I had prayed ahead of time that it would be a nice day (as it was forecasted to be thunder showers and feels like 41 degrees!) and it was an amazingly perfect day.
later in the day I said to Noah:
Remember when we prayed and asked God for a nice day for Jude's birthday?
Noah: Yeah.
Do you think God answered our prayer?
Noah: I think SO!

it was a lovely, laid-back birthday party for a two year old and I wouldn't change a thing.

birthday cake

**Please forgive the length of this post. I thought about splitting it up, but then I couldn't bring myself to do it. So...here it is. Enjoy!**

As I looked at my calendar last week I realized that my friend Jen's daughter was having her first birthday today. I thought about volunteering to make the cake but then as quickly as the thought occurred to me I forgot (like most things - but that's an entirely different post). Then, a few days ago Jen emailed me wondering if I was interested in making Naomi's cake but that there was no pressure.

Great minds think alike. 

So it was set. I was making Naomi's cake. And I was going to get to use my sweet, sweet KitchenAid. (Woot!)

So Friday morning (when I should have been at a play date which I completely forgot about it - again, that's for another post) I set to work and decided on a recipe for the cake (Pure Vanilla) and the icing flavour (lemon buttercream), the shape (square at first, but then circle) and the theme (yellow duck!).

I actually did one of those shots with all the ingredients that you see on all those fancy food blogs:

I used this recipe for the cake and this recipe for the icing. (I felt very Joy the Bakerish. If you haven't heard of her...*gasp*. GO. Now. She is adorable and bakes amazing things.)

I even bought real vanilla extract. (As opposed to the artificial stuff.) Here's the batter, ready and waiting to be bake-ed.

YUM.

(And then my kitchen looked like this:)

Not so YUM.

And then in the evening I cleaned up, wrapped up the cakes, put them in the cold room and went to bed.

The End.

Just kidding. Is that mean?

So Saturday afternoon (after I ran 6 miles, what what?) during "nap time" (Noah fought it ever step of the way) I whipped up the lemon buttercream (triple YUM) and brought up the cakes. I sawed off the top of one of them to make it more flat and then iced the cakes together (you can see in the picture above the 2 round cakes - I just stacked them with icing in between). Then I slathered the cake in icing until it was perfectly unperfect (I can't do a perfect ice anyway, so I opt for the cool "unperfect" look) and then set to work on the fondant additions (a giant "1", a giant "N" and yellow ducks).

If you don't know what fondant is, you are missing out. read this, buy some and eat it. Or not. Whatever.

I printed out the N and 1, cut them out and then traced around them with a toothpick on the fondant. Then I used a knife and cut them out. I used cookie cutters for the ducks.

I used water to attach the ducks to the sides of the cake as well as smoothing down any ragged-looking edges. I just guessed that this would work and it did!

Oh yeah and I had enough extra cake batter that I was able to make a smash cake for Naomi. I've seen "smash cakes" and I thought it would be fun to make one - plus then I'd get to make an "N" for the smash cake (since Jen preferred a giant 1 on the bigger cake - the smash cake was a surprise for her). 

Here's the final product:

Simple and cute. Just the ways I likes 'em. And delish.

After icing this small square-ish cake I was pretty happy I chose a circle for the larger cake - corners are hard to ice!

Naomi getting into the smash cake. Love this shot. All we're missing is Graham (but he was busy taking a video of this momentous occasion).

YUM. 

You know when you can't enjoy something (whether it's something you've done or something about you or some sort of talent you have) because you're too caught up in all the things that are wrong with that particular something? Yeah. Boo to that. 

But not this time.

I'm proud of my work. And it was such a joy to present this offering of love - and the proverbial icing on the cake; I had fun making it! That's not always the case with things I set out to do for others but this one, it was fun. 

Thanks Jen for giving me the opportunity and honour of making your daughter's first birthday cake!