"The Adventures of Daniel Shingler"

Well, it's December again, which begins the busiest time of the year for making cakes, since most of the birthdays in the family are in the winter. Starting with Daniel's in December, we make his, then Jeremy's and Mom's in January. After that comes Dad's in March, and then there's a long break until December again. The only summer birthdays are ours, and we don't normally work on those together.
 But now it's December, and our oldest brother, scholar, and future history professor turned 21 on December 14th. To celebrate, Katlynn and I made him a "book" cake. After much thought, we finally found a classic book title that we could squeeze his name into for a personal touch: "The Adventures of Daniel Shingler."

 This was a really enjoyable and different kind of cake to make, since it was the first time we actually had to carve one. It was fairly simple too. All we did was freeze the cake after it was out of the oven and cooled off. Then Katlynn (I left the scary work to her, which she bravely stepped up to=) gently carved out thin slices of cake in order to leave an indentation where the white pages would be. Then she used the knife to cut a narrow line on the top of the cake to make the book cover crease.
 For the icing colors, we usually use these sites to get ideas: http://sugarcraft.com/catalog/coloring/colormixingchart.htm & http://www.wilton.com/decorating/icing/icing-color-chart.cfm.

 The book cover is rust, and the lettering is semi-gold. I must say, the colors surprise me every single time we make a cake. Because as soon as we start mixing colors, it almost always seems like it isn't at all what we wanted. But it works out every time, whether it's the colors we planned on doing, or something else that still works.

Usually our cakes never turn out quite what we planned; we're always making changes and having to switch to Plan B. Nonetheless, we're usually satisfied with the results.
 Unfortunately with this one, we forgot to wipe up the splotches of brown icing on the pan before snapping the pictures. Not only that, but we probably need to find something else to put the cakes on now...it's painfully obvious that we used an upside-down pizza pan covered with foil. Huh...oh well.
 So there you go...Daniel's 21st Birthday cake...a success!