The Anatomy of A Birthday Cake

We recently celebrated my husband's (Warren's) birthday. His favorite part of the celebration was that his 11 year old Granddaughter, Olivia, made his cake from start to finish.

As many of you know, Warren is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy. He appreciates and analyzes how things are made. And this cake was no exception.

Olivia is on her way to becoming the family's official cake baker. For her birthday two years ago, we got special permission for her to enroll in an adult Wilton cake decorating class. She loved it.

So on Saturday, she arrived at my house with all of her tools in hand. Olivia, her brother, Mason, and I marched off to the grocery to purchase the supplies she needed for her masterpiece.

She chose a recipe that only made two layers and she wanted three. So, she promptly did the math and meticulously measured out her ingredients.



Once the ingredients were combined, she equally divided the resulting batter.

Then Mason arrives to play an important role in this process....LICKING THE BOWL!

Once the cake layers are baked, the fun begins! She fills the layers with "Carmellow" filling. Carmellow filling was invented for this cake. Once the layers were filled, she frosted the cake with her the homemade Butter Cream Frosting she learned to make in her class.

A chocolate sculpture dubbed "The Tree of Life" was created from a mystery ingredient and decorated with flowers. It became the cake topper.

Olivia blended her own colors from her large collection of food dyes. She used various tips from her growing collection of tools.

After dinner on Sunday, Olivia and Mason present the cake for the customary blowing out the candles and singing Happy Birthday.

Grandpa is so pleased that Olivia did this just for him! He declared, "Move over Ace of Cakes, Olivia is on her way!"

Footnote: Big sister Sydney was not present for the cake making. She was out of state with her dance team. But she returned for the celebration and with the news that her team placed first in all of their events except one. They got second in that one. Congratulations to Sydney. She danced while the cake baked!