This was a busy summer

We had such a busy summer.  Summer is birthday season in our family.  In our nuclear family and in my extended family.  Between mid June and Labour Day we have 12 birthdays.  It is literally cake once a week.  It is a crazy time, but it is fun, there are lots of reasons to get together and lots of company.  We have a pretty big house now and so we had the pleasure of hosting our own birthday gatherings, as well as some of the others! We didn't get to celebrate 2 of those birthdays, but they are a part of it nonetheless.  And actually, I am (with pregnant brain) trying to remember without consulting my calendar, so I may even be missing someone!
Here are some of the cakes I got to make!

 These were Dash's cupcakes.

 And her cake - which I admit, I didn't make.  We had just got home from holidays, you know the awful vacation I blogged about.  Um, ya, so I bought a cake - whatever - as my mom would say, "Of course I made it, I made it all the way to Sobey's to pick it up!"



Then my dad turned 59 this year!!

I made him an apple pie, because he doesn't actually eat cake - but kids like cake, so I made these chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes for the kids - they actually have a ball of cookie dough inside, got the idea from pinterest - totally delicious!

 The Toddler turned 3 this year and I saw a monster cake that I loved on the web, but then when she was looking over my shoulder, she freaked out about this Cookie Monster cake, so I tried it instead.  It was HUGE.  I borrowed a friend's wedding cake pan set and made this out of 3 layers, each was the equivalent of a 9x13 cake - it was massive!

Next was one for my sister!

 My sister turned 30 this year - and she is a nut about zebra print, so we made her a cake with zebra sugar sheets, which I had never made before...I had never made a tiered cake like that before either.

 OH, and, I made zebra cupcakes to go with it.  The cake was layered zebra-like in the papers and then I used a technique I saw on the web for rainbow frosting with just black and white frosting to make zebra frosting.  It was cool!

Then we missed my other sister's birthday because we were camping - but I still plan on surprising her with a cake some day out of the blue - because she totally waited for me!
Then we had Ballerina's birthday and she turned 16!  The big Sweet Sixteen!

That is not the greatest picture - but it was a pretty cool cake, and I cannot for the life of me find any pictures from her birthday on my own camera.  It was a 3 tiered cake (I even used dowels to hold it together after consulting the internet) and then it had ombre rosettes up the sides, starting with a light pink, graduating to a dark in 3 different shades.  I used the last of the zebra sugar sheet on the top tier and covered that top tier with fondant that my friend Laura showed me how to make.  I had made it originally for my sister's cake, but then changed my mind on the design so didn't use it - so I used a bit of it on my girl's cake.  It was actually pretty yummy.  And I think she was happy with the cake itself so that is all good!

And this was my husband's request.  He turned 40 this year and so he wanted a cake made out of a 4 and a 0 out of homemade ice cream cake.  It wasn't the most stellar ice cream cake I have ever made, but it was fine and it did look pretty cool!

I stopped at DQ to pick up a log cake for my third sister on her birthday and made my first ever from scratch Angelfood cake for my Mom on Labour Day and that completes birthday season for another year!
I have no more cakes on the agenda now until November - unless you count chocolate zucchini cakes that will be made to use up all this zucchini!