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    Family traditions

    8/3/2012

    I love a tradition. I don’t come from a family especially obsessed with them though I know many who do. My own small family has a few of our own. It’s my daughter’s birthday this week which has me pondering this.

    One of the main traditions we have is making of the birthday cake. I think this is a tradition many people can relate to. I think it’s probably a bigger deal among families like mine who lack other cultural and religious traditions. Sure you can go to Wendy’s and get an ice-cream cake or order one from the cake shop but…we’ll it’s not the same.

    In Australia it’s pretty common for children to spend a whole year looking through the Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake book choosing their cake. It has to be a cake to match the theme. The fairy party for example leaves you choosing between the mushroom fairy house and a fairy castle, cars theme and you must choose between a road and village or a car itself or perhaps your age decorated in lollies and freckles. – you get the idea. So much choice! Of course the cake the child chooses can often be beyond the skill and scope of the parents the universe handed them to but it’s hard to explain t

    Here’s a link to show you just a few of the fabled Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake cookbooks.
    http://cook-books.com.au/ccp0-catshow/childrens-birthday-cake-recipe-books.html

    We’ve made many cakes over the years. They have each have their own label in my husband and my collective memory.

    Most impressive – easily the Princess Castle with sugar-crusted ice-cream cone turrets – 5th birthday
    Most difficult to execute – Dora the Explora’s Backpack – 3rd b’day.
    Only cake repeated – butterfly – 1st birthday party (to which I insanely invited 60 people) and 3rd birthday for pre-school.
    Simple and effective – a tie between an elephant – 6th birthday party and horse – 8th birthday.

    This year we’re taking a couple of kids to archery so we’re doing a target. Should be simple enough…should be, but we’ll see.

    Target Birthday Cake

    Comments

    Renee Brown
    8/4/2012 12:50:56 am

    Do you still have pictures of the horse? I see that one in my future…

    How was the archery cake? My daughter has an obsession at the moment, thanks to Brave.
    Reply
    Monique
    8/4/2012 09:04:15 am

    I do have the horse cake pics somewhere I’ll find them. It was super easy. Archery cake was not too bad…we just made it up…I worked out we needed to start with the outside circle and work in…not my natural instinct but then you could put smaller plates, cups etc to work around.
    Reply
    Renee Brown
    8/5/2012 10:51:04 pm

    Did you use fondant or icing? I bet it would be super easy to cut the circles out with fondant, unfortunately my daughter hates fondant.
    Reply
    Monique
    8/6/2012 07:31:35 am

    We used icing not fondant because my lovely daughter doesn’t like fondant either. All the internet versions we saw had fondant. I used two tins of Betty Crocker icing. Basically one for the white and the other tine we divided and added food colour…we started at the edge with a big plate in the middle and then removed and then using plastic bags as piping bags piped around smaller and smaller plates & cups…make sense?