Dear Diary Cake

"You might want to keep that part, it will probably be worth a lot some day" said daughter L's friend S. Her friend S is a star football player on her school's Varsity Football Team and he is probably right too! It was hard to imagine we would cut into and eat up all those all those wonderful (and some strange) birthday greetings. Yes, eat them up!

I seemed bitten by the baking bug lately or maybe I am realizing how little time I had left to spoil my daughter L before she goes to college. How many more times will I be hearing the sound of her friends celebrating her birthday? I had to think hard on how to top the spaghetti and meatball cake I made on her actual birthday. After a few days of browsing on the web, I came up with a cake shaped as a book. It would of course be Red Velvet Cake her favorite with strawberry butter cream frosting in between the layers. The face / top of the cake, that is the "paper part" would have to be firm so that her friends could write their birthday greetings. I used rolled fondant for it.

You should have heard her excitedly greeting each guest that arrived."Come signed my cake." The puzzled looks she would get and then excitement they would get when they saw the cake. She had them all wipe their hands with a wipe before signing. Invariably they would ask,"Are we really going to eat this cake?" "Yes, we are!" she would happily reply. They signed the cake with markers of edible food coloring...... Those markers were what truly inspired the cake. I had seen an autograph book cake featured on the Ace of Cake show, where the cast of bakers had autographed the birthday cake for the client who was a huge fan of theirs. When I found those markers, I thought it would be even better if her friends could sign it making it an interactive cake. Those markers made it easy for them as it was the same as using markers. It was not until the afternoon of the party that we decide the book would be a diary and daughter L excitedly albeit nervously pen in her entry.

The first signers just signed their names. Later, other got more creative. As the evening wore on, many came back to add to their original entry. Of course, late comers had to find a place to sign!! All in all I think the cake was a hit. One girl even made away with a marker at the end of the night- oh yeh, we know Miss K.

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