May is a Great Time for a Birthday

May is a month for birthdays in my family.  It starts with my Josh followed by my niece, Jenni, and me.  Then my sister, Lori, nephew, Tyler and niece, Amy.  So we got together for a birthday/ farewell party.  Josh leaves tomorrow for the summer.  I’m going to miss him.  My first one to leave the nest.  He’s old enough and I know he’ll do fine.  It’s just hard to see him go.

Anyway I made a big cake for the party.  I used two cake mixes; one chocolate the other yellow.  I tilted the pan while I poured in the chocolate then set it flat and hurried and poured in the yellow.  This way I have two kinds of cake and only one dirty pan.

It also makes everyone happy.  They can choose what kind of cake they want and if they can’t decide the middle has both.  I saw a picture on the web of a cake with swirls.  I figured I could do that, since it’s the quilting pattern I’m best at.  Well, I thought I had some disposable decorating bags, wrong.  Apparently DD used them the last time she made cupcakes.  Well growing up my amazing mom, who decorated wedding cakes, would used wax paper rolled into a cone with the tip cut off for the decorating tip.  So I figured I could do that.  Well, technically I did, but it took several attempts.  I had icing all over.  In fact I ran out that’s why the upper left hand corner is missing icing.  That little bit ended up in a sticky mess on my counter as I tried to get it out of one of the blown out wax paper bags.  No worries, it still tasted good, and we had a fun party.