Page 58 - Chocolate Cake Doctor

40 L U S C I O U S L A Y E R S

Easy Ways to Decorate a Birthday Cake

ou have never taken a cake- the cake with a necklace of blossoms, or
Ydecorating class in your life, but you poke a small hole in the top of the cake
want to dress up the birthday cake with and stick a cluster of sweetheart roses,
more than supermarket candles? Here are or one large beautiful peach rose
some ideas: snipped off its stem, in the hole. Be
sure to choose nonpoisonous flowers
• Choose a fluffy frosting. Fluffy looks
like hibiscus, honeysuckle, daylilies,
more festive than the sleek ganache or
pansies, lilacs, nasturtiums, roses,
silky glaze. Apply it first with a metal
tulips, and violets.
icing spatula, then create a decorative
effect on top by spreading more frosting • Chopped candies. Scatter the birth -
on in circles with the spatula, as day boy’s or girl’s favorite candies on
though you were waxing a car. Or, for a top of the cake, be they M&Ms, crushed
different effect, spread on more frosting peppermints, or crushed toffee bars.
and with the back of a teaspoon make
• Make a letter cake. Bake the cake in
small indentations or grooves in the
a 13- by 9-inch pan. When the cake is
frosting.
cool, invert it onto a cutting board and
• Fresh flowers. Surround the base of cut the cake to form the honoree’s first

Solid vegetable shortening for greasing 3 large eggs
the pans 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Flour for dusting the pans Chocolate Pan Frosting (page 434)
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow
1. Place a rack in the center of the oven
cake mix
and preheat the oven to
1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant
350°F. Generously grease
pudding mix
two 9-inch round cake
1
1 ⁄4 cups whole milk
pans with solid vegetable
1 ⁄2 cup vegetable oil
shortening, then dust with