Brilliant Birthday Cakes

September 25, 2015Jenn Goddu 1 Comment

I’ve written recently about birthday disasters and birthday generosity. But who doesn’t love a good piece of cake?

Photo credit: Smithsonian’s National Zoo / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Today I want to celebrate the birthday as a day to get creative with cakes. Herewith a gallery of fun birthday cakes I found doing a simple search on the fantabulously useful Foter.com:

The Ghostbusters sheet cake:

Photo credit: poppet with a camera / Foter / CC BY

Or the Super Mario cake (I tried this birthday theme when my son turned five and am NOT sharing my efforts although they were certainly creative…hey, at least it tasted good).

Photo credit: Fays cakes / Foter / CC BY-ND

Or this Lego one (which looks like even I could make it with some sheet pans and cupcakes):

Photo credit: fd / Foter / CC BY-NC

Or this one Angry Birds-themed delicacy:

Photo credit: Wicked Little Cake Company / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Or this delicate looking one:

Photo credit: distopiandreamgirl / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Or this cake presumably tailored to a photographer in the family:

Photo credit: ayos lang / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

I truly admire the originality people put on display when they want to serve up something special to friends and family. It’s one more reason that birthdays are so beautiful!

Photo credit: Jamie Anderson / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Please share your great designs below. I’d love to see them!

One today? Smash it!

February 4, 2015Jenn Goddu 6 Comments

It isn’t a first birthday until someone has cake all over his face. Or, in the case of some buzzkill friends of mine who WILL be named (Jay & Jenny), yogurt!

I’m all for healthy eating (well, 86% for it at least), but on your birthday you deserve cake. Even if you are only 1-year-old. Witness my own son’s first birthday cupcake smoosh-a-thon. Yes, it does deserve a-thon because, as you may remember, he had a Charlie Brown party but I had already made the cupcakes expecting friends. So, we had plenty of monkey-faced cakes for him to chow down upon.

If nothing else the birthday cake eating/smashing moment is a great one for posterity. Here are some other great images of youthful cake glee I discovered via google.

Image source: http://www.bumpandbambino.com

Image source: http://jp16.r0tt.com/t_b86908a0-c56d-11e2-9968-cf597fc00016.jpg

Image source: http://blogs.babycenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/outfit13-300×200.jpg

Cake smashing is its own sub-genre on Pinterest. Here’s some great photography to enjoy!

Of course there is now actually a trend to provide the birthday girl or boy with her or his own cake that they can use for finger food and face stuffing. That seems a little much for a kid who won’t remember the moment past their next nap. Nevertheless, you only turn one once. Let the baby eat cake!

Share your own pics and thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to see them! The messier the better.

“Birthday Cake Fail” Fast Approaching

January 25, 2015Jenn Goddu 4 Comments

My son’s birthday is coming up. This means it’s nearly time for me to attempt another overly ambitious feat of cake decorating. I try to keep with the theme he’s selected, but what I envision in my head is seldom what the guests enjoy.

I remember my mother making really creative cakes for my brother and me. However, my mother is a visual artist; I am a writer.

Google “birthday cake fail” and you’ll find many options. PopSugar offers a 43-picture slide show. BuzzFeed labels its article: “24 People Who Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Decorate Cakes.”

This is mocking people who have made the effort to make their loved one’s birthday that much better. These people didn’t just go to the grocery store and let some professional pipe on “Happy Birthday Sweetie.” No, they added the eggs to that boxed cake mix and pulled out the tub of icing and got creative!

I say suck up the ugly and taste the love!!

In the meantime, here are some of my past efforts (I expect to see these in someone else’s Cake Fail album one day).

For a beach party theme.

These are supposed to be monkeys. Can’t you tell?

Most recent effort became a mess of confetti and cutouts from cereal box as my superhero plan went woefully awry.

Sports-themed cupcakes. Probably my best yet (except for the hockey sticks on the right).

Let them eat bread with sprinkles?

November 20, 2014Jenn Goddu 1 Comment

Fairy bread for your birthday sounds cool, right? It might even be worth the crazy long flight to Australia or New Zealand to celebrate my special day there. Only, it sounds a lot better than I think it would taste.

According to Mental Floss, there’s a tradition on birthdays of eating white bread spead with butter and topped with sprinkles. This is called Fairy Bread (and, by the by, the sprinkles are called hundreds or thousands.

Not sure how you’d make such a thing (because I know spreading butter and sprinkling something on top sounds tough)? Don’t worry: Here’s a recipe – yeah, it has only one instruction!

To make it more challenging, you might try out some of these fairy bread-inspired recipes.

The fairy bread wands look just like candy-covered pretzels sold in chocolate shops here. So, you could probably just visit Rocky Mountain Candy Co or the like if this is still too daunting a baking task.

For those, on the other hand, who want to take it up a notch there’s always baking a cake to look like Fairy Bread as this sugar-amped Sydney-based baker did.

Sending your hopes skyward by flame.

October 19, 2014Jenn Goddu 2 Comments

Photo courtesy of kiwimorado.blogspot.com/ via flickr

We have some odd ideas for how to celebrate our birthdays.

At this point it’s pretty common to set ablaze candles pushed into the cake so we can make our wish while blowing our spit all over the cake! This is now such a familiar tradition, we can find candles that extinguish over and over causing the birthday person to turn red in the face with effort and/or embarrassment along with so many other bizarre wax ways of expressing personal flair.

Apparently we have Germans to thank for this age-old tradition. Happy Birthdays Round the World gives them credit for both starting birthday celebrations called kinderfeste (literally translated to children festival) and for being the ones who wanted lighted candles on cakes. They were adopting an old belief that lit candles helped carry prayers up to the gods. So, when you’re wishing on your cake you’re really hoping the flames (42 BTU in my case this year) will carry your hopes up to someone who can do something about them.

So, when you’ve been doing this birthday cake wishing, what’s the best one you’ve made and did it come true? Tell me below!

Birthdays are Best

Everything about birthdays. A blog focused on birthday fun facts, parties, tunes, trends and more. And there will be cake.

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