More Thoughts on the Birthday Cake

I have three weeks to get one heck of a "wow", birthday cake completed. Like last year, I'm going to need to make dozens of cookies ahead of time for decorating. Here's what I'm planning.

The Day The Earth Stood Still -in cake, cookies, and sugar paste.


Two cake layers baked in pie pans, and stuck together to fashion the flying saucer. Green tinted coconut for grass. The Washington Monument and Capitol building constructed from sugar cubes and sugar paste. I cheated and bought a bag of plastic army men. Tanks, other artillery made from decorated cookies, Klatu, Gort, the Patricia Neal character, and that "gee whiz mister" kid, from cookies, and a candy-constructed fence around the perimeter of the ellipse. For the sake of research, I went ahead and bought a VHS of the movie for.50 cents plus shipping on Amazon. I'm happy about that-everyone should own a copy of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

The problem with decorated cookies (for me anyway) is that I end up decorating five of each before I get one that looks good enough to use. Mr. Eat The Blog is happy enough to eat the mistakes, but that ends up being a whole lot of cookies. I figure I'll need about 15 tank cookies, but god knows how many I'll have to make to get them. Worse, I'll have to make them after Danny gets to bed in the evening. Last year, I was up until midnight for weeks before his birthday baking, and decorating. Then, I had to get up super-early and hide the dried cookies in the morning.

So tonight I'll begin making the templates on heavy card stock and mixing up a few batches of butter cookie dough for the fridge. Thank goodness I was able to get butter for a dollar a pound, and loaded up the freezer. Mr. Eat the Blog thinks I'm insane to shop that way, but he isn't a mama. Mamas know how much butter goes into a proper birthday celebration.

Anyone have a favourite cake recipe that will hold up to being frosted and decorated? I'm open to suggestions.

OK, I'm going to go put my feet up and rest tonight because with the start of Monday morning, operation Danny's Birthday is in full-swing. Poor kid, it is rough having a birthday five days before Christmas, so I really want to make it special.

Hee, hee. I'm so excited!