I'm making a cake for a family party on memorial day. the party is for all the occasions in may- a few bdays, my parents anniversary, and mothers day. any idea how i can combine them all? i'm making a sheet cake (9x13). last year i did cupcakes that said happy everything, and I'm thinking that that might be smart. any design ideas? my decorating abilities are very limited. thanks for any ideas.

Eva

What about making sorta of a sampler? You could do something like that with Happy Mother's Day in pink, Happy Birthday in festive colors, Happy Anniversary....

I made something similiar at the end of the Wilton 1 course. We had to make cakes that had a lot of what we had learned on it so I made it "sampler" style! lol Could work.....

you know, I thought about something like that, but as I said, i really have very limited decorating abilities so it would be very boring. I think I'll end up doing a happy everything cake. by the way, anyone have any idea how long it takes for a wilton order to ship? I ordered a few things and was wondering. (regular shipping)

Even if all you used were different colored 'squares' that is interesting, and then add some accents...purchased if you can't make yourself, with written in names/dates...simple, but it can be really nice.

Sorry have no clue about Wilton...they don't/won't ship to Europe. Check their website for FAQs.

Be sure to post whatever you do, curious to see!!

if i can figure it out, I'm for sure going to post the pic. I also have to post the other cakes that I've done sometime. I'm probably the newbiest-newbie on the site tho.

I envision a 3 way 'division': On each upper corner write "Happy Birthday" and "Happy Mother's Day' then centered in the lower part of the cake "Happy Anniversary" . Make a curve of flowers (anything, even a bunch of drop flowers) either over or under the writing. This is very do-able even for a biginner If you have the writing abilities you can even add each name.
Add nice, zigzag borders and you'll have a pretty cake

oh another question. usually I use margarine for my icing which makes it stay soft and yeah you know where I'm heading . I can't use crisco cuz my mother would flip if I used trans fats, so would butter be better or would it be the same story? those are my only 2 options so whichever ones a teeny little bit better I'll have to use, even if it means no borders cuz they wilt.

Eva

maybe you could use this idea. make a square or maybe even a rectangle cake that looks like a calendar with the month at the top and the rest is a grid with each day marked, then for every occasion you are wanting to celebrate you aknowledge it in each square. you could pretty it up by adding flowers or whatever around the border which can be associated with mothers day, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. we have done this idea with the month of september because we have so many to celebrate and everyone has their "own" day HTH

I substitute real butter for the crisco in the regular BC recipe in Wilton, if you make it stiff enough with powdered sugar it works fine, even the borders turn out fine.

oooh jodei thank you thank you for that idea! I'd seen a calendar cake like that once before and I loved it! I'll do that- it's perfect. can you tell I'm excited? thanks again! oh can anyone answer my frosting question from my previous post?

Eva

i use the buttercream dream icing that is in the recipe section. i just use the store brand of stick butter, not sure if it has trans fat or not but ever since i started using that recipe, i have nothing but good reviews. also i have not had a problem with not being able to put on borders or flowers, etc. HTH

Oh! I like that calendar idea!!!

How about a quilt design on the sheet cake. I saw something like that in a wilton year book. You can make nine blocks or 16 depending on how many occasions you are aiming the cake for. 16 will be probably too small to write anything on a 9 X 13 cake. If you us 9 X 9 of 9 blocks of quit, you will be left with some more space which you could use for writing names etc.


Just my though. I am very new to all these too.

Try the calendar idea... You could mark the special dates with little fondant birthday cakes, flower for the anniversary, graduation cap if there is a graduation, mothers day, a different flower, or the word "MOM"... etc. I did a July calendar for an employee group birthday and it was a huge hit.

cute cakes, angie! now I'm second guessing myself... is a calendar really a good idea? i only have 4 things to put on it- would it look really boring?

I don't think it would be boring at all. The top of the calendar/pic could be your main focal point... something Summery or Memorial Day related, then the special days noted... it wont be boring![/quote]

ok, I'm going to do the calendar cake. thanks for the ideas! I'll let you know when it's done.

The new Crisco has no trans-fats.

oh good point, I'll think about that. who knew icing was such a big deal!