Another Birthday... another Cake!

It is long past time to tell you about this birthday cake. Remember Robb's birthday? Way back in August? Well, on the SAME day, dear Greer enjoyed her birthday, too! Yeah, they share the same birthday. Even weirder is that they have the exact same couch. That might be where the similarities end, but no, there's at least one more thing they have in common... a birthday cake made by me this year!

Greer's husband Stefan (who also had a birthday recently... more to come on that) snuck around and planned a surprise party for a week after the big day. He requested a lemon coconut cake for her. I even knew that she likes tropical flavors, but instead of listening to him, I spent a bunch of time imagining all kinds of other flavors and really spinning my wheels. Finally, (duh) I landed on a lemon cake and a coconut custard filling with a vanilla buttercream with shredded coconut on the sides. I am very glad I listened, she loved it. A lot.

Here she is blowing out candles. Her helper may look familiar- that's Lila who had her own pretty pink birthday cake last December. Here she is helping Robb enjoy his birthday cake, too.

Boy, it was a darn fine cake. The lemon cake recipe is one I found in a cake decorating book. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so spectacular given the source, but WOW it was fantastic. If you'd like the recipe, just shoot me an email.

I had some fun with fondant and made pretty little daisies. They didn't dry before the humidity took hold. They were still pretty, even if flat like starfish by the time Greer got to see her cake. We also enjoyed some smokey pineapple jalapeno sorbet, and a cool creamy mango ice cream. It was a lot of fun to make all these goodies, and super fun to surprise Greer!

Here is the last hunk before it was all greedily eaten up, even Stefan had 2nds. That's saying something when a guy who claims not to give a darn about sweets goes back for more!

Happy birthday Greer!

- Janet