Celebrate!

For starters, it's the first day of Summer, if that floats your boat.

So far this year, we had months of drought, now it's getting hot, but we're getting some rain pretty much every day.

But that's not what we're celebrating here.

Mom has a big birthday this weekend.  She's turning 80, but don't let her know I told you.  We're having a family get-together, at my house on Saturday.  My sister, brother-in-law Adrian and their two kids are arriving in town tonight, and A's mother and brother are arriving Saturday to help us party.  Saturday morning, my brother and his wife are flying in;  they'll be staying with me.   Party TIME!

But I digress.  In the meantime, I think the shopping is done.  Mom wanted a barbecue, so I'll make teriyaki beef skewers, and grill some vegetables.  I've made some baked beans (great northerns, cooked in a slow cooker then baked with smoked bacon), and Saturday I'll make some baked rice to go with it.  I also have a some pork tenderloins that I plan to marinate in garlic, soy sauce, orange juice and  rosemary.  The recipes should take care of a number of future posts.

Last but not least, I thought Mom would prefer a home-baked cake, no matter how it turns out, to a bakery one.  So I plan a yellow cake with chocolate buttercreme frosting (or is it icing?), decorated with marzipan fruit.  I made the fruit a few days ago, and colored it with food coloring.  They came out pretty dark...I think I should have diluted the coloring with water.  But I think it will work against the background of the tan frosting.  My late husband and I took a cake decorating course with some friends years ago, at Michael's arts and crafts store, so hopefully I will remember enought to make this cake presentable.

I decided to make a three tiered cake, and used three round Wilton cake pans, in 14-inch, 12-inch and 10-inch sizes.  I bought boxed cake mix (so sue me)--three boxes of buttercake, and baked the layers tonight.  Since I wanted the layers to be of an even thickness, I had to put a proportionate amount of cake batter in each pan, and that depended on the area of the pan.

Since the area of a circle is πr²  the areas are proportional to the r², so the batter should be divided in a ratio of 100:144:196.  To make it simple, I rounded it to 2:3:4.  I used two boxes of mix for the 10 and 14-inch pans, putting two scoops of batter into the larger pan for every scoop I put into the smaller.  That is, the small pan got 2/3 of a box of mix, the larger one got 1 1/3 box.  The 12-inch pan got a whole box of its own.  After baking, all appear to be roughly the same thickness.

They're cooling now, I'll refrigerate them overnight and crumb-coat them tomorrow (when this will be posted), and finish the decoration on Saturday morning.

I'll post pictures after it's done.  I don't plan to overdo the candles, just a few tokens to denote the birthday nature of the celebration.

[Image from screensavers.com]

Comments

[Stryder]

My mouth is watering.

[LC]

Can we have the buttercream frosting recipe? Pleeeeeese?