Happy Birthday Boy!

Along with getting ready for school next week, we have been celebrating a birthday!  My youngest son turned twelve and wanted to celebrate with mini golf and a day at the beach with fried shrimp from his favorite restaurant. We were more than happy to oblige!

Fired up!!

Creativity is one of this guy's strong points and when we have a birthday in the family, it is a tradition to go all out on the cake, and he is front and center in the planning and creation of these cakes. No detail can be left out. Trust me on this. We have made ipod cakes, cheeseburger cakes, lots and lots of different golf cakes, lego cakes and many, many, more zany creations.  Some successful, others not so much. 

When his birthday rolled around, we asked what kind of cake he wanted and he issued a challenge........whatever cake we thought he would like.  Surprise him. Yikes!!  What could we come up with that would impress him???  After some panicked moments, careful thought, and a desperate internet search, we came up with an excavator cake from Family Fun Magazine.  It went well with one of his gifts, a Lego Technic Excavator.

The Great Excavator Cake of 2011

First was the shopping trip for pound cake, mini doughnuts, Twix candy bars, yellow twizzlers, and Twinkies.  Where have all the Twinkies gone??  Go to your grocery store next shopping trip, and ask for yellow Twizzlers and Twinkies, and see what they say.  First they wonder what you're up to.  Next they will probably tell you they don't have either.  So much for an easy recipe!!  I was able to find a diet-cake-like-Twinkie-substitute, totally not appropriate for a birthday cake for a twelve year old, but that would have to do. (Later said, "diet-Twinkie-like-cake" was scrapped upon opening the box, because it turned out to be the size of a pencil eraser. I use some more pound cake instead).  I was finally able to locate the yellow Twizzlers at a drugstore.  Happy Day! 

On the first hole the birthday boy made a hole-in-one!

Making that cake turned out to be much easier than shopping for it, with lots of frosting on fingers, and we were really pleased with the results.  He was too.  He loved it! Yeah!  Happy Birthday!!