Soccer Ball Ekadasi Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my son's best friend for his 8th birthday. Since his birthday happened to fall on Ekadasi it had to be a grain-free cake. I used my buckwheat cake batter for the layers and a cream cheese-butter-icing for the frosting. Since I only use natural food coloring I could not make a black soccer ball but who said a soccer could not be orange? Turmeric was used for the orange color and wheat grass juice powder for the green color.

I find it challenging to make cakes in the hot summer weather here in Florida. I had to put the decorating bag in the fridge every so often because the icing was literally melting in my hands. That's why the cake looks a little bit messy.

Independence Day Cake aka 4th of July Flag Cake

My family was invited to an Independence Day BBQ (vegetarian, of course) party. We were invited kind of last minute and I only had short notice to prepare a dessert I was asked to bring. I immediately thought of making a flag cake since I had seen one a day earlier at the public library here on the cover of a magazine. I did not have the recipe, so I just made one up. I baked a sheet cake and frosted it with cream cheese buttercream icing and whipping cream. The hostess had requested to use spelt flour in the cake batter because her husband is allergic to wheat. I usually use whole wheat pastry flour for cakes but the spelt flour worked great as well.
The blue part is made with blueberries and the red stripes are obviously made with strawberries. Sorry, I do not have time to post the recipe. I have a very active 16 month old and I spend most of my day keeping him out of trouble and cleaning up the mess he constantly makes. He is a very naughty boy, and also very curious and very smart.



Yes, I did put 50 stars and 13 stripes on the cake. I like being authentic....
And I am not even an American, but the rest of my family is.

Basket Weave Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my favorite girl, my daughter Marisha. This year she wanted roses on her birthday cake and I wanted to experiment with basket weave decorations. I did make the mistake of using butter cream made with butter only, no shortening. I would not recommend it as the icing was literally melting in the decorating bag as I squeezed it. And what to speak of trying to make roses with it. The icing is just too soft and even though I refrigerated it to harden it a bit, it did not stay firm long enough to make nice roses. Next time I surely will remember to make the right kind of icing for roses or other flower decorations. Or at least I hope so...

Top view of the cake

A closer look at the basket weave decoration.

And here she is - the birthday girl. As you probably can tell, she really liked the cake...

Ekadasi Birthday Cake

My husband's grown-up son came to visit us on his 30th birthday. His birthday happened to fall on Ekadasi, so an ekadasi cake it had to be. I used my banana-buckwheat-batter which gives a nice moist cake layer and used buttercream icing. I usually use cream cheese icing for my ekadasi cake and I have to say it goes better with it than buttercream icing. The only problem is that cream cheese icing is too soft and runny for decorating purposes. Even though it tasted good I will definitely experiment some more with ekadasi cakes. Plus I have to figure out how to make some "guy colors" with natural food coloring. This one was supposed to be blue and red but no matter how much of "blue" and "red" I used, it still only became dark purple and dark pink. Maybe those colors are impossible to achieve with natural colors...

Another Birthday Cake

I did some more experimenting with natural food colors. I liked this yellow-orange combination. This cake tasted very good. I think I found the perfect combination of cake and icing. Still, it will not stop me from trying some other cake layer recipes....

Nimai's Birthday Cake

This is my second flower cake which I made for my son's first birthday. I found the perfect recipe for the cake layers and for the butter cream icing I used French butter cream. French butter cream is tricky to make but it tastes so much better and has a very nice silky texture. It is made with a sugar syrup and all butter, no shortening. For the colored decorations I used the "American" butter cream made with organic non-hydrogenated shortening, butter and powdered sugar. And the food coloring is all-natural again, of course. I need some more practice in the writing department though. But all in all I was very pleased with the result and everyone who tasted the cake liked it a lot.


Marisha did not think that pink roses very appropriate for a boy but I am sure he did not mind at all. He did take a few bites of the cake but otherwise he probably had no idea what this was all about.


And here he is: The birthday boy. My miracle baby who had a true knot in his umbilical cord and for several reasons caused me to have a lot of anxiety in pregnancy. Now he is already one year old and a happy camper. Where did the time go? Didn't I just have him yesterday?

Birthday Cake Experiment

I always admire well decorate cakes and I always wanted to know how to make those nice roses. And since there are several birthdays coming up this spring I thought I better get some more cake decorating skills. I am not very artistic. I can't draw a nice picture or paint, or sing, or do anything else that is considered an art. Still, I was determined to make some nice cakes this spring. Not that I have never decorated cakes before. I always bake my families birthday cakes and on a few occasions I have baked a cake for friends.

What makes it somewhat challenging though is the fact, that I only use all-natural ingredients and never use artificial food coloring. I have tried the SEELECT brand of natural food coloring before but did not like the fact that it was too liquid. For example, the color blue is blueberry juice concentrate. It made the icing too thin and runny. So I searched the Internet for a better solution and I think I found one. The India Tree brand worked just fine for me although you can only mix pastel colors which I like better than the strong colors you find on decorated cakes in the grocery store. India Tree's Natural Decorating Colors come in a set of three colors: yellow (turmeric), red (beet juice) and blue (red cabbage). If you want any other colors you will have to mix them yourself, and there is were the fun part starts.


I had trouble getting a nice green color. I just could not get a nice green and so my husband suggested that I use some wheat juice powder instead of the India Tree colors and I tried this on my next cake and it worked a lot better. I suppose one could also use spinach powder.

Now my next challenge was the icing. I knew that I probably could not make the roses without using shortening and shortening I did not want to use. I never bake with it. In fact, I never buy it. So one day I was walking the isles at Mother Earth Market and I saw a container of shortening. I was curious about it because I did not think shortening would be sold in a health food store, after all, it is not a healthy food. But is said "organic" on it. So it could not be so bad after all. And what really caught my eye was the word "non-hydrogenated" on the container. Wow, I did not know that such a thing existed. It is made from palm oil, has 0 grams trans fat and less saturated fat than butter. Not that I am going to use it instead of butter from now on, but to use it every now and than for those lovely roses on a cake should be okay.

The above cake was my first experiment. I was not totally satisfied with it. I thought the roses came out good considering it was my very first attempt making them. I did not like the grainy-ness of the icing though. I made powdered-sugar-half-butter-half-shortening icing for the entire cake and it was way too sweet for my taste.


Here is a slice of the cake. The filling was some strawberry jam and whipping cream. The cake layer was okay but I was going to try another one next time. Marisha loved the roses. She did not want to eat them because they looked too good according to her. Only after I promised to make some more did she eat her roses. Well, and since I had to keep my promise I made some more a few days later...