birthday

I really love baking for birthdays.  Cakes, cupcakes, frosting, sprinkles, piping…is there anything more delightful than that?  My cakes never turn out as pretty and whimsical as I imagine them, but I try not to let that get to me, it’s all part of the fun.  I do though get stressed out a little bit before I start baking, when I’m trying to decide what cake to bake. There are so many different recipes out there and so many resources to get them from, that I find it overwhelming to say the least.

There is a sort of thought process that I go through when a birthday starts to approache.  I first think of what kind of sweets or desserts this person likes and try to create a list of flavor profiles like: chocolate and strawberries, or lemon and almonds.  Then I start the “research.”  I look everywhere.  I go to food blogs, the Food Network, my cookbooks, magazines, and I also go to the bookstore where I grab any cake/baking book I can see and look through each one of them.  This thought process lasts for hours, days, sometimes even weeks and in the end I usually end up with two or three recipes that I like.  There’s always one cake candidate that models the flavor profile list pretty well, while the others are more geared towards something I would like or something I think would taste amazing.  I mean, don’t some people say you should give a gift you would like for yourself? Well, in the end I usually do the right thing, and pick the right cake.

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