Among the Chaos, a Celebration

Last week, I was a mad woman due to stress from my first semester finals. I'm still pretty anxious since our grades have not been sent home yet, but I can relax a little but more thanks to a nice three day weekend :) My last test, as well as my mother's birthday, was Friday and instead of coming home and sleeping, I got to do something much more stimulating. I went and got my mom some flowers and cards from the rest of the family and then the real work began- her birthday cake! I let my mom pick the type of cake she wanted (she immediately responded with the same answer as last year- carrot cake!) and also sketched a few ideas for the design of the cake and she chose the following:




The cake itself was a recipe I sort of made up as I went along, combining the recipes from both VCTOTW and VWAV, and it is filled with and covered in the cream cheese frosting from VCTOTW. The borders and basket weave pattern on the side are piped with a cream cheese buttercream recipe that I just threw together because I needed more frosting, but I didn't have enough vegan cream cheese left. The cream cheese buttercream worked out really well because it had the tangy taste from a little bit of cream cheese, but the added Earth Balance and shortening made it fluffier and stiffer- perfect for decorating a cake! I decided to make the carrots out of marzipan since I've been curious about working with it for a while and it was great. Since I used small amounts of marzipan for each color needed for the carrots, it didn't take too much work to work in the color and I love how versatile it is! You will definitely be seeing more marzipan decorations coming from my kitchen.

I thought the cake came out pretty well, but the real test was what my mom thought. After dinner, my mom announced that she was ready for cake so I brought it up into the kitchen and, let me just tell you, her reaction was priceless! My mom thought the cake was gorgeous and exclaimed "You have to open a bakery, honey! Hurry, I want a picture of it!" Haha- I guess she liked it then! Everyone in my family loved how the cake tasted as well, which is the most impoartant thing. I did not make this cake gluten-free because I wanted to be absolutely sure my mom would love it, so I want to tinker around with my recipe a bit more to make it gluten-free before sharing it.

And, of course, I could not forget the beloved inside shot: