A Baking Story

It all started out innocently enough.  I was throwing a party and it turned out that was the same day as my friend S_______'s birthday!  So I ordered a sheet cake with Happy Birthday, S_____ on it.

Then it came to pass that she was not feeling well on the day of the party and so stayed home.  When I texted her the next day to see if I could drop by (with the surprise cake, of course!) she wasn't up for company.  So I checked to see if she was going to work on Monday, and she said she wouldn't be in until Wednesday.  She said she had something for me for Christmas, and I said I had something for her as well, but it was perishable and I would see if I could freeze it.

A few hours passed and I heard nothing further, so I stared at the cake and decided that keeping an entire cake around until Wednesday would be asking for problems with my food plan, so I cut it in half and gave a bunch away, scraping off the lettering and planning to bring the rest in to work.

So, this is what the cake looked like when I got the next text:

The text said, You know what, I WILL come in tomorrow!

Well, hmm.

So I cast about the house, digging out ingredients to MAKE a cake, since there was no time to order another one.  My eyes lit onto the batch of sugar cookie dough I had made in anticipation of making Christmas cookies.

An idea sprung to mind!

First, I made a crust out of the cookie dough:

Then I added chocolate chips, walnuts and another layer of of cookie dough:

Then I rolled out some cookie cutouts and baked everything:

Then came the REALLY fun part! FROSTING!!!  I made a basic buttercream, and lettered out Happy Birthday S_____ onto the cookie cutouts:

I sprinkled some colored sugar on the pink frosting but didn't love how it turned out so didn't do it on the rest of the cookies.


Then I assembled the entire thing and put one candle in the middle:

 

Yes, it is quite gaudy, but aren't birthday desserts SUPPOSED to be???

 

I brought it in this morning, and Katrina and I sang to her and she blew out the candle:

 



I am actually so, so grateful it worked out this way.  I had such a BLAST being creative and having fun with frosting -the sugar headache was totally worth it!! (I mean, I had to taste everything to make sure it was right!!)

It is very rare that enough time and enough inclination converge for me to have this kind of fun.  So, Happy Birthday, Miss S!!  You are awesome!!