Jill Can Cook: Quinn's 4th Birthday Cake and Quinn Helped!

Four years ago, I gave birth to my little daughter, Quinn. Gosh, four years... Has it really been four whole, entire years? I don't feel like it's been that long.

Anyway, to commemorate this special occasion, I decided to make a cake for her. Over the last week or so, I've been checking out recipes as well as decorating ideas. I decided to go with a recipe off of this page and there are Lots of cake recipes there.

 

Vanilla Cake

Ingredients:

I didn't have it in me to make the frosting from scratch. Store bought, it is!

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

 Directions:

1. Cream together butter and sugar.
2. Beat eggs and add to mixture
3. Fold in flour/baking powder mix alternately with milk/vanilla mix.
4. Pour into greased pan.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a pre-heated 350 degree oven.

Getting ready to cream the butter and sugar.

I wouldn't normally have Quinn (or anyone) help make their own birthday cake, but Quinn really wanted to help out.

Quinn stirred the eggs so we could add them to the butter/sugar mixture.

Joe was busy doing his own thing, hanging out with Mitchell. He heard us having a great time in the kitchen and decided to come over and watch for a couple minutes.

The 3 mixes getting ready to be mixed together.

I put the batter in my two little loaf pans. Quinn spent the rest of the afternoon spooning sugar into a bowl.

While the cakes baked, I got the frosting stuff together.

After the cakes were nice and cool, I cut the tops off so they'd be flat and would stack together well.

This is where we took a break from making the cakes. There was fun to be had, so off we went!

We went to Chuck E. Cheese and played air hockey!

Quinn loved it in the huge tube  hanging from the ceiling.

And we played enough games to win 25 tickets! That got us a dorky kazoo.

Both Quinn and Mitchell loved it at Chuck E. Cheese's. Joe and I spent $5 on tokens and they lasted us about an hour. Granted, Quinn spent most of the time in the tube and Mitchell was happy enough just running around like the other kids there. Otherwise, we probably would've spent more.

After Chuck E. Cheese's, we went back home where there was a surprise waiting for Quinn:

In trying to be more eco-friendly, I wrapped her gift in her blanket! She loved unwrapping the blanket.

It's a "Kitty Surprise!!" And the kitty looks like our kitty, Sasha (-; Yeah, I planned that.

This toy is so cute. You get the Mom cat and she has anywhere from 3 to 5 little kittens in her belly. I guess it's only a 1 in 4 chance that your Mom cat has more than 3 kittens though. I hoped that we'd get the max, but we only got 3. Oh well, Quinn doesn't know any different, so she was ecstatic to find 3 surprise dolls.

She is so sick of smiling at this point!! Haha anyway, that's us with the kittens.

Ok, back to the cake!! I am by no means a professional or even an amateur cake decorator. I usually just slather the frosting on the cake and try to make sure it's somewhat even. That's it. I don't do "fancy." But, the kids are getting older and they deserve a little more than the least I can do. Besides, how hard could it be to make a swirly design?

The easy part: Putting the frosting in between my two layers. First, I blob it on...

... then I spread it out.. So, far so good.

I put the top layer on and hope I don't screw the rest of it up!

I put the frosting bag in a cup to supposedly make it less messy. It was still pretty messy regardless.

Voila!! My pink rosette design!

A close up.

Quinn was pretty impressed and very happy with her "pink rose" cake. Joe was also impressed that I was able to do anything beyond the basics. I liked how it turned out but I'm sure I used too big of frosting tip or something because I ended up using almost 2 packages of the pre-made frosting. Good thing I bought strawberry flavored frosting!

This cake did not photograph well.

Quinn couldn't wait to blow the candles out.

She did a really good job at it.

She even let Mitchell have a turn!

It looked pretty fancy once I cut into it!

Mitchell loved it!!

Quinn, Joe, and I loved it, too!

My kid is 4 years old. My other kid is going to be 2 years old soon, too! As much fun as it is to see them grow and learn, it's also kind of sad to leave the baby years behind. Quinn is 4 now. She's not a toddler. She's a little girl. A little girl who's going to start school soon! It's just so weird to think about. I mean, 5 years ago, I didn't have any kids yet. I wasn't pregnant yet. It was just Joe and I. And now we're a family!! I love it.

Happy birthday, Sweetheart!