Happy Birthday to Me and My Rowan!!!

The joke in our house is that I gave Rob and I children for our birthdays.  Abby is 6 days after Rob’s birthday in July and Rowan is 4 days after mine.  I’m January 28th and Rowan is February the first!  So as you can imagine lots of cake goes down at our house at least two times a year :)

My birthday is pretty standard.  Dinner with the family and then carrot cake (recipe below too)  I get to play with ideas I’ve not yet tried.  This year I decided I wanted to try the buttercream rosette cake.  Now the only issue is that I prefer my carrot cake naked, however there are others in my house who prefer icing.  This seemed like an appropriate compromise.

I didn’t get to rest on my laurels for very long because next up was Rowan’s Lavagirl cake.  First off, I hate making characters on cookies and figurines out of gumpaste.  Less so of the latter.   But when this face asks, you say yes.

Now she did give me free reign on the design but it had to look like lava; there had to be a volcano; Lavagirl had to be on it and oh yes, flowers, lots of flowers.  Right!

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of Sharkboy and Lavagirl this is the movie poster.  And yes, that is Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame.  His acting was just as bad.  But she loves it and that’s really all that matters.

First I had to make the cake look like lava.  So I used red food colouring in the cake to give it a lava look.  Filled it with chocolate butercream and covered it in marbled fondant.  So far so good.

Then I made the volcano out of rice krispie treats and covered it in black and red marbled fondant.  Then I placed it on top, added some lava fondant beads, some flowers and of course Lavagirl herself.  As requested!

I have to admit I was pretty proud of my first hibiscus.  It may not be a traditional colour, but it worked!

My Lavagirl had a great little party at Monkey Joe’s with her friends.  The bounced for an hour, ate pizza and cake and then back to bouncing.  Tired kids are happy kids or maybe that’s happy mommies.

Now I normally make cookies for goodie bags but this year I was fortunate that my friend Laurie of Cookie Bliss made them.  We got Rowan a logo for her birthday, as she wants to own her own restaurant when she’s grown up. Rowan’s Food Never Fails. 

I sent it to Laurie and these are the cookies she came up with.  They are brilliant!

We have several left and I can’t bring myself to eat them as they are so awesome.  Don’t worry, Rowan doesn’t have such an issue.  A cookie is a cookie, especially when it’s a really tasty cookie :)

Now I can rest until July for the next set of birthday cakes in this family.  I’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone who wished Rowan and I a happy birthday on my Facebook page.  The love was overwhelming.

Thanks for looking!

Carrot Cake Recipe:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups apple sauce
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups grated carrots

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, apple sauce, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. 
3. Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
5. Ice cake with favourite icing.  I used lemon buttercream.
6. Enjoy!