Crystal's Cake

A couple years ago, I started making my friend Crystal's birthday cake. It's a tradition I love (and hopefully she does, too). This year, I found the cake I was going to make in November. In its original form, it was a cake made to look like a Christmas present (and it was chocolate-mint flavored, which is yucky in my book). Last year I modified the cake I made to fit Crystal's tastes. I had planned to do that this year as well...and then I ran across this cake and had a moment of indecision. So I sent Crystal to my Pinterest cake board and she said she loved the look of the tuxedo cake but the snickerdoodle cake she saw sounded good. So, I had my solution: to make the snickerdoodle cake look like a present.

As you can see, the cake is quite large. This is how I did it: I made two batches of the snickerdoodle recipe using two 9x9 pans per batch (four layers total). I added a box of vanilla pudding to the cake recipe because the test cake I made was dry even though I baked it for less time than called for. I also doubled the frosting recipe. I know the icing doesn't look professional, but I keep forgetting to get an offset spatula. I think that would help. This was my first-ever time working with fondant, and I think it looks pretty good when you consider that. I made the bow without any kind of pattern or tutorial and, while it is simple, I was very pleased with the result.

Success? Well, I enjoyed making it and people seemed to enjoy eating it. It literally could have fed a small army.

Now I guess the only question is what I will do next year.