Nearly Birthday Cake Time

I have just under two weeks to pull together Danny's Birthday cake, and all the decorated cookies to go with it. We're doing a penguin theme this time around, which thankfully involves much fewer icing colours. The cake itself will be an igloo baked in a bowl. It will need to be easily transported because he's having his Birthday at a hotel. Yeah, he is.

Last year, we lost power on his birthday, and heat. After half a day waiting for the power to be restored, we gave up, headed down the ice and snow covered county road, and at a slow crawl, made it to a hotel in LaVista. When they heard it was Danny's Birthday, the staff sent him vouchers for free movies, and though we were pulling our hair out, Danny was having a great time.

This year, when asked what he wanted for his Birthday, he replied, "A stay at the posh hotel." There's a pool, a cocktail hour in the lobby where they will make him a Shirley Temple, and a double room with a suite where he can (and this is from the kid who almost never watches television)"Watch two tellys at once." How could we say no?

Anyway, I thought this would be a fun time to take a trip down memory lane looking at previous cakes we've invented. Looking at the photos, I can honestly say my skills have improved over the years.

2006-Simple, tasteful, nothing elaborate.

2007-The first iced cookies from templates appear. Amateur.

2008-Yeah, I had the iced cookie thing down pretty good by that point.

2009-He really liked, "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Obviously, I had to do it in cake and cookies.

2010-The siege of troy.

2011-A battery and lightbulb

and the periodic table on iced cookies. Those cake-writer food colours are a godsend.

2012-Monopoly, all the property cards are iced cookies, again making use of cake markers.

And then, there were some half-Birthday cakes as well:

Hurricane cake

And this year? Stay tuned.