Baptism Cake

We spent the day getting ready for Ryan's baptism. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how long it's been since our house was this clean. Thank goodness I have a very helpful husband (and that the weather wasn't good for ice fishing anyway.)  We are having brunch tomorrow after the service and among the three things I made this morning, I used 22 eggs. That's a lot of crack-a-lackin'. I made a breakfast casserole and the Peaches & Cream French Toast from Simple and Delicious. Hopefully they will turn out tomorrow in my timebake-impaired oven.

I also made a chocolate Midnight Cake from my favorite cookbook: Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor. This book has lots of recipes for layer cakes, bundt cakes, sheet cakes, cupcakes (you get the idea) and they all start with a cake mix! It also contains lots of frosting recipes and helpful tips. One tip I used today was that I placed the two layers in the freezer for about 15 minutes before frosting them and that helped cut down on the cake crumbs contaminating the white Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.

I decorated the cake using the Wilton Buttercream frosting recipe and based the design on the wrapping paper I used to cover the cake board. I have dabbled a little bit in cake decorating, teaching myself from the Wilton Decorating Cakes Book but man it takes so much time! Adam was unfortunately here to see the mess I create when I bake (I usually try to spare him) but he was a willing dishwasher anyway.

Ryan hardly slept at all yesterday and he sure made up for it by sleeping a lot today! He slept until 6:30am, ate, then went back to sleep until 10. He also took a long nap this afternoon and went down without a sound at 8 tonight. This was extremely helpful because contrary to any pictures of a helpful "baker" Ryan you may have seen recently, he is not really all that helpful with complicated recipes.

I'm just sayin'...we don't let him use the blender...yet.