Life Through Food: Tea and Cake

After weeks of trying to perfect my icing, I have finally done just that - and in the nick of time too. Monday, my mother and brother celebrated their birthday with a tea party, and I decided to do a bit of baking and cake decorating. I made the three cakes I have perfected so far, namely, carrot cake, lemon polenta cake, and the coffee chocolate cake.

The carrot cake was iced using smooth cream cheese icing with loads of icing sugar, a bit of butter and

Carrot Cake

just a hint of vanilla. To decorate, I used roughly crushed walnuts (same as that used in the cake itself) and tumbled just under a handful of silver cake decorating balls.

Scrumptious Carrot Cake from the side

I thought of serving the Polenta cake un-iced, but then thought "why not decorating it in the spirit of the

Lemon Polenta

occasion". So a lemon flavoured butter icing was in order. This time I even tried my hand at writing - i have to say it doesn't look too bad. To make the lettering stand out the silver ball decorations were tumbled onto the surface before lettering.

Happy Birthday to you.....

I have to say the coffee chocolate cake was very rich and dark - but delicious none-the less. The letter-

"MOM & TOM"

ing didn't come out too well, I used white chocolate and dark chocolate decorations on the base, which didn't really help with reading. Anyway, next time I know what I shall do....