Grandma's Birthday Dinner

I was excited at the prospect of trying out my adult cake making skills. I'm learning through the internet on how to decorate cakes. It will make it cheaper in the long run with birthdays. 

I made a basic buttercream icing for the flowers two days before. 

1/4 cup butter

about 1/4 cup water (supposed to use milk, but we are all allergic-especially grandma)

a splash of vanilla 

powdered sugar

Cream the butter, water and vanilla together. Add sugar until it reaches the consistency you want. Remember if you are adding food coloring to add more sugar because the food coloring will make it runnier. For the flowers, I made purple, pink and yellow. 

I used my Pampered Chef cake decorating kit and went to work. I think they turned out pretty good, but I definitely need some practice. :)

For the cake, I cheated and used a cake mix we had sitting the cupboard. I had heard that if you add a splash of vanilla to it, it will make it taste like it's from scratch. I didn't notice a taste difference, but it certainly didn't hurt it any. 

 

 That's my coconut oil melting, don't look at the messy counter lol

 Of course Andrew and Eva had to help, it was for grandma, after all. 

I put coconut oil and flour on the cake pan before baking so the cake would pop out easier. Then followed the box instructions for baking-but with my crazy oven it took more like 45 minutes.

For the cake icing, I did a cream cheese icing with less sugar than the recipe called for, I just added until spreading consistency. 

8 oz cream cheese

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

Powdered Sugar

Soften the cream cheese and butter. Cream together then add powdered sugar. 

I did add some green to it for a border and some yellow for the words since My words wouldn't come off the wax paper. 

Added my premade flowers and wa-la. :) 

Dinner was steaks, potatoes and broccoli. 

I cooked the steaks on the griddle (we aren't much for outdoor grilling around here), steamed the broccoli and baked the potatoes....And forgot the rolls. So now I have a tube of biscuits to do something with. 

It turned out pretty good and the steaks were pretty juicy. :D I didn't do too bad. And grandma loved it-which was the important part.