My Baby Turned 15 Today

That would be 15 years.

It seems like yesterday she was turning 13 and I couldn't believe I officially had a teenager in the house. And it seems like a few weeks ago she was playing with Barbies and My Little Ponies. And wasn't it just a few months ago I was teaching her how to walk and proud and excited every time she would say a new word.

*Sigh*

This past week my 3 older children have been at my mom's (spring break). I was planning on making a chocolate cake from scratch for her birthday and when I called her this morning to wish her happy birthday, she informed me that she didn't like chocolate cake.

What? When did this happen? I mean, what 15 year old dosen't like chocolate cake?

Oh, and she also informed me - definitely don't put chocolate frosting on it either because that just taste weird.

What? Weird? Chocolate frosting?

So what kind of cake DO you like - today? She said she liked carrot cake. Fine. I had a box carrot cake in my stockpile - I was kind of disappointed in using it cause I really like making the birthday cakes from scratch but I didn't feel like searching for another recipe, since I already had the chocolate cake recipe picked out and had all the ingredients for that.

But here is what I did do to make it a little different and special. I saw this idea on Sandra Lee a few weeks ago:


The frosting I used is just simply powder sugar, butter, milk, nutmeg, vanilla. By using decorating gel icings you make circles, lines or other designs on top of the icing and then take the tip of a toothpick and drag it through the icing to make awesome designs. For the tie die ones, just make a bunch of dots all over the cup cake and use your toothpick and swirl the colors together. Of course, mine don't look as good as hers and I wished I would have gotten some brighter colors - but I think they turned out pretty good. It definitely takes some practice and getting the hang of it.

Here are some tips I figured out along the way, maybe it will help someone - if they decide to do this:

1. If you make you icing from scratch don't make it too thick. You want the icing to be smooth and wet enough to be easily manipulated when you run your toothpick through it - otherwise it will crack and crumble and ruin your design.

2. Also, if using your own homemade icing I would suggest only icing one cupcake at a time - for the same reasons as above. After sitting for a few minutes the icing forms a 'crust' and it's hard to manipulate the frosting. By the time I figured this out I actually when back and had to scrap off all the frosting and then iced and decorated them one at a time.