Welcome to the place where words come alive!

Let's build a word!

Well, we did it! The little man's third birthday went off without a hitch, and everyone had a great time.

new soccer ball!

I know this isn't a 'cooking blog', but I've gotten a lot of requests for this page, soooo....


I've gotten into a routine of making my kid's birthday cakes, and they've gotten progressively more and more elaborate over the years:

The girl's 1st birthday owl cake...

...with cupcakes to match!

The boy's 2nd birthday cake - Kipper the Dog

And this year was no different! If you haven't seen the show Word World, here is a picture of the cake that Chef Pig makes:

Right.

I can do this.

(right?)

Always with an open mind (and a practice cake being a must), I dove right in.

I started by using a regular cake mix, adding a few goodies to make it pretty dense:

• 1 cake mix (I used the Kroger value brand because it looked the most dense already on the packaging) and all of the ingredients it calls for 
• Add 1 additional egg
• Add 1 package of instant pudding mix, should match(-ish) your cake flavor
• 1/2 stick of butter (probably not really needed, but I just threw it in for good measure!)

 I baked two batches of this recipe in an angel food cake pan (grease the bottom of the pan only. This lets the cake 'creep' up the sides of the pan). Cool and remove from pan, freeze both cakes at least overnight.


Once the cakes are frozen, stack the two cakes on top of each other on your serving platter, and you're ready to carve (eek!!).




I always use a template.
Cheat.
Like crazy.



Cut a piece of paper the height of your cake, and make it the length you want your letters to be (I made mine half way around the cake).

Sketch your letters and cut out a template.










Hold your template up to your cake and use a small paring knife to cut around your letters:

Once all your letters are cut around, you'll need to 'pop out' the cuts. Knowing the top of the cake would be completely iced, I stuck a larger knife (the length needs to be just longer than the height of the cake) down through the top behind where the cake would need to come out:

Continue this process until your all of your letters are cut!

This was his practice cake, and here's a picture of the final cake on his birthday:

I won't lie, this cake was a bit tricky to figure out, but seeing the look on his face when he had a birthday cake "just like Chef Pig makes" made it all worth it.


They're only little once.
Take the extra time and effort and watch their face light up :)