Happy Birthday Hubby

I usually try and make birthday cakes for my family when the days roll around each year. While I am no "Chef Duff", I do like to try and make unique cakes when I have the time and inspiration. This year for my hubby's birthday I was going to make him a cake shaped like a book and write the name of his least favorite college class on it so that he could then cut it into pieces LOL.

I also decided to make a carrot cake for the first time. Note to self..don't try a design you have never done before, and a pan you have never used before, and a recipe you have never made before all at the same time. To all of you bakers out there, you probably know better, but learn from my mistake and don't do what I did.

My mom had bought a Wilton book shaped cake pan at a yard sale and I had been waiting for an occasion to put it to use. It did look a little larger than the average 9 x 13 cake pan, but I was not sure, so I got on Wilton.com and looked up the pan information. I love Wilton stuff, their pans, kits, their website,,all cool. If you get a pan second hand or you lose your original instructions you can go to their site and get all the instructions for it, such as how many cake mixes or cups of batter or icing you would need for a particular pan.

The site did say that the pan only needed one cake mix so I did what they said, but it did not come out right. It only filled the pan about half full ( yes I will use to mixes next time), and it stuck to the pan something awful. It came out of the pan in at least 8 different pieces and various crumbs. This was at 10:00pm last night and I had already had a rather trying day. It always seems that your baking efforts go worse when you are tired or stressed, are cake mixes affected by stress like plants are? LOL

So I just left it too cool until morning so that I could tackle it with a fresh perspective. I ended up being up most of the night with revolving children and sicknesses. The fresh perspective I was hoping to gain was lost somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, but I still wanted to make some sort of something out of this pile of cake. I was at least happy that the cake tasted good so that was a start. I looked at the pile when I would pass through the kitchen doing morning things, then inspiration finally struck...

My one daughter had made daddy a card shaped like a gun because daddy is a shooting and hunting enthusiast. So since I had only a few pieces of cake that were bigger than a deck of cards I made a small "box of bullets" to go with the gun card. If I had more time and practice I think it would have been even more cool, but for from the seat of my pants and too much humidity it was not half bad.

I am not that great at piping yet, but it is the thought that counts right?! LOL Who knows what we will come up with for him next year.