I’m Not A Crafty Mom But I Can Make A Pretty Good Cake

I'll admit, I'm not a crafty mom.  I'm just not that person.  I try to be every now and then, but it usually ends in disaster.  However, when I was growing up my grandmother was an amazing cake decorator and I learned a lot from her.  Now we are talking the classic cakes, you know the ones with the tiny stars on the cake kind of decorating.  I'm good at that.  However, the new type of decorating with fondant and handmade characters, not so much.  I was pleasantly surprised when E's birthday cake turned out fairly well this year.

E recently celebrated his birthday and this year we had a swimming party (Side note if you are looking for a indoor pool that is reasonably priced try the Midtown YMCA).  So I wanted to keep with the theme of a swimming pool.  I cooked up a marble cake and layered it (I didn't make enough icing so I opted not to put a layer of icing between the two and realized I should have.)  Then I tried a new icing recipe because I wanted the whipped cream icing (the icing similar to the kind you get on a supermarket cake).  At first I thought I killed the recipe, it called for a 1/2 t of salt.  That's a lot of salt in a icing recipe.  When testing out the taste all I could taste was salt.  However little did I know that after letting it sit overnight it turned into this bowl of sweet fluffy deliciousness.

I iced most of the cake in green, then created a giant blue pool in the middle.  So here we are with a big pool cake with nothing in the pool.  Again, remember earlier when I said I cannot create little tiny people out of fondant and modeling chocolate,  I really can't.  So instead I bought some Teddy Grahams and Sour Patch Kids and a lot of other candy.  I took the Teddy Grahams and put them in Gummie Savers.  Voila!  People in the pool.  I then took colored Twizzlers and made pool noodles that the Sour Patch kids could hold onto.  I lined the outline of the pool with M&Ms.  Made a diving board out of an 'Airhead', as well as beach towels and floating rafts.  So with all that said, here is the final finished product.

Here's a cake I made for him on a previous birthday:

Like I said they aren't spectacular but they were made with love and a lot cheaper than buying one.