Christopher's Cake

My youngest turned three the other day, so I baked him a cake. My cake decorating skills are still pretty elementary at best, but I can hold a piping bag without the frosting coming out the top. That probably counts for something. My kids think I'm great, so that counts for a lot, and besides, I let them help. That fact, in and of itself, makes my cakes way cooler (in my kids' opinions) than anything I could buy from the local grocery store.

I used my formed "Blue's Clues" pan that is at least 5 years old. Probably more like 7. I may or may not have made my now nine year old daughter (make cake decorating assistant in the above picture) the exact same cake when she was 2. I have no photographic evidence of that fact though.

I really like the Wilton food coloring gels. I've gotten the best color results out of those. (However I only have the standard liquid food coloring drops to compare it to.)

I really like how the flash from my camera (which is a total no-no when photographing food, but the lighting was terrible) highlights all the little spots where I didn't quite fill in the frosting properly. I know there's a technique to avoid that, but my hand starts to cramp after awhile, and I stop caring. Also I was going to try and fit "Happy Birthday Christopher" on the notebook, and while I think I did pretty good with the left/right spacing on the "Happy Birthday" I didn't think there is any way I was going to fit "Christopher" on there. I could have gone for "Chris", but while he may choose to shorten his name when he's older, he's still "Christopher" to me. (Or Kissy Chrissy, but that wouldn't fit on the notebook either,) so I just went with the very generic (and very gloppy) "3".