Blanket Blog: A GRAND birthday cake. Pun 100% intended.

Today is my friend Danny's 20th birthday. Since we just moved in, we didn't want his birthday to be forgotten in the chaos. I came up with the perfect plan-- a homemade birthday cake. I had a mix in the cupboard, baked it last night, and texted my friend Sully to let her in on the plan. She responded that his mother had had a cake made for him and brought to the school. A really awesome cake.

Shit.

Since I already had a cake baked and Danny eats more than any other human I know, I figured I'd still be okay.

We took another Walmart trip, and this time it only cost $10 (we're following a reader's request and hitting a farmer's market this weekend, so I'll let you know how that goes later.) I got the idea to put his favorite candy on the cake, hoping that it would be something easy like Reese's Pieces. It turns out his favorite candy is 100 Grand bars, so I decided to give it a try.

Look at the title. Now look down here. BAHAHAHA.

Turns out 100 Grand bars are full of caramel, so they don't really crunch up nicely. I put them in between the layers and stretched out the caramel, which was alright in theory. The cake (yellow with chocolate frosting and some purple sprinkles I found in the cupboard) turned out nice looking, if a little lopsided.

You don't need to look back up at the other cake. It's really okay.

We somehow got Danny over without him knowing what was going on, and he was very happy about his cake. We decided pre-dinner cake was acceptable today.

His birthday gift to us? A child's laughter.

Here's where I recommend not using 100 grand bars to fill a cake, even though it tastes really good. Those strips of caramel couldn't really be cut with a butter knife, and since they were only frosted on one side, the other side stuck to the cake and pulled out big chunks with it. So my less-than-pretty cake crossed the line into ugly once it was all cut up.