I asked my husband to bring home a book about kids’ birthday cakes as I’m preparing this week for our son’s 2nd birthday party. This is the book he brought home. It’s entirely inappropriate for what I was looking for, but what a delightful and unexpected find! The subtitle to the book is “Recipes and Memories from Celebrated Bakers”, and that is the set up of this cookbook. 
Each recipe, most from well-known chefs, is accompanied by a little story memory either from that baker or from someone else, which somehow relates. Several of the recipes are pretty elaborate, but there are definitely many I can’t wait to make, such as the luscious looking German Chocolate Cake. The Princess Cake from Sweden is a gorgeous luna moth green fondant covered dome, and the Claude Monet birthday cake is also a marvelous green confection. The photographs and food styling in this cookbook are really lovely, and I think that’s why it especially appealed to me.
I have this group of friends I email with and from time to time we’ll submit questions to each other to talk about. A few weeks ago one of my friends suggested we answer the Inside the Actor’s Studio questions, one of which is “What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?” My answer to that was that I’d love to be a food stylist-the person who sets up the pretty pictures of food and flowers and accessories for beautiful pictures in cookbooks. I liked the very pretty and occasionally somewhat retro set-ups for each of the cakes presented here. A gorgeous book to pore over.
In the meantime, I’ll be making either a cake shaped like a big number 2 or a frog or a turtle.
Here are the recipes I hope to try from here:
Comforts Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese and Coconut Frosting
Magic Spice Cake with Penuche Frosting Pink Elephant Cutout Cake
Buttermilk Poppy Seed Bundt Cake Becky’s Birthday Cake
German Chocolate Cake Old Fashioned Banana Spice Cake
(I’m avoiding anything with 7 Minute Frosting, which I can never get to not be runny.)
Update: I did make a big #2 for Clark’s birthday cake and it was very pretty, not to 
mention delicious! Yellow cake with buttercream frosting and the filling was frosting and fresh strawberries. (see Sew Buttons for further instructions on making the #2)
