Mother Knows Best

Tomorrow is Mother's Day! And it's a super special day!

Quick side note here: I didn't actually ever expect to experience Mother's Day as a mother just a few short years ago. Call me crazy but I had no plans whatsoever to have children. Unless they were the furry kind.
Fast forward a bit and I met my husband. Fast forward some more and we got married and had our first daughter. Fast forward even more and we now have our second daughter.
It is truly amazing how God can change your mind and your plans in such a short amount of time.
Looking back, I would change nothing about my life. I am truly blessed.

Oh sheesh! I got all personal and mushy.
Sorry about that everyone!

Let's move on shall we?

What, oh what, would be a good Mother's Day treat?
Hmmm....

How about some neat little individual cakes?
Brilliant!

I can't take credit for the conception of such a fun idea. Although I wish I could. *sigh*
I got the idea for these from something I found around Easter. You can check it out here: The Cake Blog
Yes, they are Easter eggs. And no, I did not make eggs for Mother's Day.

Instead, I did flowers! That works for Mother's Day right?
Whew! Good!

Now, if you took the time to check out that link you'll see that they just used store-bought cake and icing. Personally, I feel like that's cheating. Partly because I enjoy making things right from scratch as much as possible. My husband teases me about 'stress baking'. It's a real thing for me apparently.

Oh good grief! I got sidetracked!

Moving along.

Now, I decided that I had better find a cake recipe that I could use for these lovely little flowers and since the Easter ones were made with pound cake I thought "Why the heck not?"
So I of course searched up a recipe for pound cake.
As it turns out, there are a lot of different varieties. I had no idea! How did I not know this?

So I used the eenie-meenie selection tool and chose this recipe: Million dollar pound cake
It turned out amazing!
After I cut off the top I nibbled a bit. Perfect density, tiny crumbs. So yummy!

I had to cut the cake in half lengthwise before I could cut it crosswise. And I'm terrible at cutting a straight line so they are not all nice and even. What a bummer.
(Note to self: Buy a cake leveler! They're like $4.00 at Walmart. And yes, I checked.)

 

 

 

But not to worry because they'll still look pretty good when it's all said and done.

I whipped up some buttercream frosting and made it nice and thin so it was more like a glaze. Just like the lovely person who did the Easter egg cakes said to make it.
And then I just poured it over the cakes.

I chose to do yellow and blue because, well, because I apparently have no red left. Otherwise I would have gone for pink and yellow. I don't know how I forgot that I was short on colours. I've mentioned it in blog posts before. Goodness.

Anywho. I had to let the icing set for about 15-20 minutes before I could move the cakes. The blue ones look better than the yellow I think.

Now for some fondant. Which I think would be best just left white. So I rolled it out nice and thin and used the same cookie cutter to cut the flowers.
Cookie cutters! That's another thing I need to buy more of.

I brushed a teensy bit of water on the iced cakes and carefully set the fondant on them. This is more time consuming than I had first realized. I need to remember that the next time I make something like this.

 

I left the fondant plain just because I am still learning how to work with it. I'm hoping to learn more about working with fondant in the next couple of weeks though.
If I knew anything more about fondant you can bet your heiny I'd do some fun embellishments. Make the flowers look more realistic and whatnot.

But for now I'll say farewell and Happy Mother's Day!