Rainbow cake!

Two friends share a birthday on March 20.  We were going to be together, so a cake was in order.  When I was at tutoring on Monday, the girl I'm tutoring told me about a cake that she and a friend of hers had made.  You know what I did then... went to Pinterest to look for a recipe.  Here is what I found:



This was really easy to do.  Essentially, you make a white (box) cake according to the directions.

 

I then split the batter into bowls, added different colors of food coloring to each, and spread them in a bundt pan a layer at a time.  I was worried about stirring them together accidentally as I spread the layers out in case the colors would mix, but found out later they didn't really mix.

I also needed a glaze, so went with a recipe from here:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/vanilla-glaze/

The glaze didn't work as planned.  It seemed to be a lot of powdered sugar for very little liquid, and the recipe said, "Stir until creamy."  It wasn't getting creamy anytime soon, so I alternated adding milk and powdered sugar until it was a good consistency.  Ended up with WAY too much glaze, but it tasted good!

The final result was REALLY moist (yum!) and very pretty!

Definitely recommended!  Enjoy!

Balloon avalanche!

Scenario: We were going out of town on a youth retreat.  One of the youth in my group would celebrate her 13th birthday while we were there.  Something special had to be done, right??

Inspiration from here...

Source: diyhomepins.com via Nancy on Pinterest

It was a great success!  I definitely needed help to pull it together.  I had to alert the six other people in her room that once they went to bed that night, they needed to stay in there.  And that the birthday girl needed to be the one to open the door in the morning!  They agreed to do their part.  Also, there is no way I could have held those balloons in place AND taped all of the crepe paper to the door frame!  I had three helpers - all willing to stay up extra late to make the surprise happen.

She came out in the morning and was definitely surprised.  We were actually trying to fix some of them that had fallen out right as she opened the door, so I think it scared her a little to see us standing there. Oh well. She enjoyed it and will hopefully remember it for a long time!

Here's our final product...

Highly recommended as a fun way to celebrate a birthday!!