Birthday

My Lil' Squirt is 2 years old!!

On Friday my mom and I took him and his cousin to the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke to celebrate his birthday. It isn't the greatest zoo but it was perfect for the little ones because there wasn't anyone else there so they could just run around and check everything out at their own pace. We greatly enjoyed it!

Friday night I made a lion cake for for Lil' Squirt's birthday party:

I used a recipe from my Taste of Home cook book for Moist Chocolate Cake and simply doubled it. I made two round cake pans and filled two muffin pans with the rest of the batter in little cupcake cups. For the brown frosting, I used the Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting recipe in the Taste of Home Baking Book and for the yellow frosting I used the Bakery Frosting recipe (divided by fourths and using vanilla instead of almond extract) from the same cook book. I had a bit of problem when it came to the round cakes, however. Even though I greased the pans, they still didn't come out well. The first one looked terrible but was still in one piece while the second one just came out in chunks. Instead of making a two layer cake, I decided to just go ahead and use a portion of the failure as a raised part on the cake for the mouth and nose. It worked out really well! It wasn't until AFTER the cake had been made that I received a link to one of my favorite blogs, Lynn's Kitchen Adventures, which stated that sprinkling the pan with cocoa powder before pouring the batter in keeps the chocolate cake from sticking to the pan. Genius! Anyway, it still turned out beautifully despite my limited baking and decorating knowledge, and it sure was a hit!

We had a blast at the party, passing around our new baby niece and watching the antics of a couple of toddlers surrounded by lots of new toys and books. Lil' Squirt greatly enjoyed having his truck driver Gramma and her dogs stay with us but now the guests have left and the festivities are over so we can take a deep breath and get back into our normal routine. We like routine.