MANmade Cake and Pie

When Richard and family last visited, I asked him if he'd be interested in any of my Wilton cake pans. He's the only one in the family I know that is "into" decorating cakes. With Ellie's birthday coming up, he thought that was a good idea, so we took the time to dig a box of cake decorating stuff out of the storage pod.

It didn't take him long to make use of some of them! Yesterday they had a conglomerate birthday party for the Kroeker clan, so Richard volunteered to make the cake. And what a cake it is!
Ellie is into all things Sesame Street, but particularly fond of Elmo and Oscar the Grouch. Richard used the ball cake pan he got from me to make Oscar's head, and 4 round cake layers stacked together to make the garbage can.

What an awesomely cute cake! I think he did a great job with it. He said it took longer than he figured, but they usually do. It's time consuming to construct one, then do all that tedious piping the icing on.

Since he did the cake on Saturday, and the party wasn't until the next day, he was presented with the problem of keeping the cake from drying out. You can't just lay plastic wrap on the cake, or the icing comes off with the wrap and there goes all your hard work.

Once again, he put his little gray cells to work and came up with a workable, if humorous looking, solution.

But not only do we have MANmade cakes in our family, we have MANmade pies! Last time Jess and I visited my dad, he asked us if we'd like some apple pie for dessert. Of course we said yes! I just figured one of the ladies who have sent him pies before had sent this one. It wasn't until we'd finished eating the pie that Dad 'fessed up that HE made it.

Well all right! I'm really proud of the way Dad's taken to puttering around in the kitchen and making things for himself. He makes pies, and cakes, and one of the latest new recipes he tried was for Sausage Jambalaya. Go Dad!

I for one am all for MANmade food!