My first cakes

As my skills have improved over the years, I thought that today I thought I would share some of my first cakes, not all of them made by me, but some of them downright hilarious! 

Here is my first birthday cake.  I guess my mom wanted to keep it simple, but to me it looks like a store-bought flan with some whipped cream.  This is what you call "semi-homemade".  I'm sure we all enjoyed it, the boy in red sure looks happy about it!

 

By the time I turned six, I had had my share of the cakes my mom could get at the local pastry shops.  Whipped cream, fresh fruit, light sponge cake - yuck!  So, my ingenious mom would get me an ice cream cake.  I think there was some sort of mocha flavour, which I didn't like either!  I don't think she knows that.

 

I still own that tray.

 

Blowing out the candles!  When my mom tells my girls about my desire for ice cream cakes, she always says "ice cake", because in Dutch ice cream is "ijs", so my kids must wonder if she just slapped a icicle on a plate or something!

When I turned nine, this was my cake.  Homemade with whipped cream.  Pretty cute!

Check out the Holly Hobby napkins.

39 cents for a bottle of pop!

This is the cake my mom made for my brother's 13th birthday.  You might have guessed he played the trumpet.  You never know where the inspiration will come from!  Lol! 

This my mom's 50th birthday cake.  I think my sister-in-law made it with my "help".  I think I helped with placing the jujubes.

 

In 1981 I wanted to make my mom's birthday cake.  I had visions of this work of art I was going to carry out - a dark chocolate cake with white frosting.  I turned to my sister-in-law for help, she bought the cake mix and the frosting and let me do all the work in her kitchen.  Except, I forgot to grease the pan, and the cake just fell apart when I tried to remove it from the pan.  I perservered and frosted a crumbly mess.  My SIL had a vanilla cake mix and chocolate frosting in the cupboard and so we made that one too and this time we did grease the pan.



 

Here I am trying to frost the "crumble" cake.



Here are the two finished cakes.

I brought the ugly cake out first and thought my mom would be disappointed.  Nope, she didn't even notice anything was wrong and she loved it because I had made it! 

 

Blowing out the candles on the ugly cake.

Enjoying the beauty of the good cake!

Moving right along, it is now 19 years later and my oldest daughter was turning 4.  For her party, we went with a games theme, inspired by the fabulous Martha Stewart.  Here is the cake Martha made...

 



And here is my version!  Unbelievably horrible!!  I am having a hard time admitting I made this.  But it tasted great, with my first ever lemon curd and Swiss meringue buttercream!  Some of the features I now cringe at are the foil covered cookie sheet, the sloppy edges, the muted colours... wow!

And the photography!  Obviously not my husband's work!

Three years later I made this cake for my youngest.  I use this picture in my desktop slideshow and everytime it comes up and laugh at the lopsided edges and the writing and the colours and bulge between the layers.  The kids are cute, though!

When the sprinkles started to go into the edge of this Tupperware container, I decided to make it part of the decorating design.  Ingenious, I know!

I am pretty sure my skill level has improved.  I certainly have more recipes and tools and knowledge that I can bring to the table!  I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane!