Brian's Birthday. (May 2004)

Last year, Brian wouldn't let me make him a birthday cake. He said he thought *I* made a bigger deal of his birthday than *HE* did. I kept trying, but he insisted and I finally gave in. So this year I had to be slightly sneaky, and when he came over for dinner, I didn't let him know that I remembered that it was his birthday. He seemed genuinely surprised when I revealed the cake. Steve--whom I haven't seen in almost as long as I've seen Brian--came over for dinner, too, at the last minute, which was really nice, so he got to enjoy the cake too.

The cake is a 5-tier yellow cake, the largest tier being 6" round, followed by 4 more, each one an inch smaller than the one directly underneath it. I had to rush down to Fantes during my lunch break this week to get the smaller pan sizes, since the smallest I'd had up until then was only 6". Also, it turns out, there are no batter amounts or baking times listed anywhere for cakes smaller than 6", so I had to pretty much just guess. The batter amounts were easy, actually, since I just filled each one slightly more than half full. I ended up with extra batter, so I made a extra tiers just in case, and these eventually turned into the Noddy Cakelet and the Max & Zoe Cakelet, which I'll add to the list as soon as I can.

The colors are reminiscent of the Obnoxious Spring Monday cake I did in April 2001. I've always liked clashing, obnoxious colors, and since I know Dan would dump me if I WORE colors like that, I figured I can at least use them on a cake. And I knew they'd work really well on a tiered cake like this one, where you have a lot of room to spread the colors around and see how they relate across the height of the cake. I made 6 colors total, and made each tier a different color, reserving yellow for the star border (tip #16) around the bottom of each one

Problems: A bigger cake with this design would have needed some sort of structural support to keep it from sinking into itself, but I gambled that a cake this small would survive the 36 hours it needed to without collapsing, and I was right. I did have a problem with one of the layers being slightly uneven, and I was afraid the top 3 tiers would slide off, but I proped up the cake board on one side to level it out and things were fine. Also, the last 3 layers were a little hard to ice because they're so light that the move when you press the spatula against them. I actually ended up icing the top, 2-inch later in my hand and then put it on top of the cake to add the final decorations. The last problem is that I found out the Brian's moving to California! (Swimming pools...movie stars) So this will probably be his last birthday cake for a while.