Our Family Recipes: Fun Birthday Cakes: The Lion Cake

Growing up meal time was a "fend for yourself" time. Generally. We did have meals together. Sometimes. As a general rule if you were hungry, you found something to eat or went hungry. After getting were married, I remember my husband asking me what we were going to have for dinner. To me it seemed a funny question. I told him I was going to have cereal and asked him what he was planning to eat. It seemed a perfectly logical to me. (I should say here that my husband was one of six children and they ate nightly meals together). He asked in his very sweet way, “Don’t you think we should make something and eat together?” I was baffled. After all, it wasn’t a birthday, Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving. It was a regular
day. It wasn’t even Sunday. “Seriously?” was my response. Probably not what the poor guy wanted to hear. The next night we had meatloaf. I was very proud of myself. It was a regular day, and I had cooked dinner. Again my sweet husband asked (so kindly as to not offend), “Do you think we should have
something with the meatloaf…like potatoes, rice or corn?” “SERIOUSLY???” I had just cooked a main course, which to me was a big deal. The idea that he thought there should perhaps be more on the table was totally foreign. We’ve come along way since then. I now usually cook a nightly meal, not to mention making breakfast & lunches. Cooking has become something I usually enjoy. We are busy with 3 children so meals have to either be very simple and fast, or planned ahead of time. And yes, we do still have cereal for dinner every now and again.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Fun Birthday Cakes: The Lion Cake

Lion Cake: This was among my favorites. You can see the picture in the picture above we were referencing, but we did a lot of our own thing and worked with what we had. It's half of a ball cake on top of a regular round cake. The chocolate curls are made from melting chocolates (we bought orange) melted (the whole bag) and mixed with about 1 tbsp of shortening and put into mini loaf pans (about 1 inch thick). Then us a potato peel to curl them once the chocolate has set. (overnight is good). You have to play around with the peeler to figure out the different thicknesses of curls and tightness. We tried our best to tint the frosting to match the chocolate. I initially just dumped the chocolate on there, but it looked terrible. My husband then fired me from the chocolate curl job and did it himself. This is really where it pays to have an artist as a husband. He had a great eye for placing the curls and making it look great. I usually take the upper hand in our decorating, but this was one cake where he did the brunt of it!

The finished product!

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