Well, if you have been a faithful reader of my blog, you might remember that last year the hubby and I had a contest to see who could make the best cake for our annual church fundraiser, which takes the form of a Valentine themed cake auction.  We had a lot of fun doing it, and you can read that other post here.  We had every intention of carrying on the tradition this year, but as the time drew near, the hubby simply ran out of time.  He has been more than a little busy lately, building other things besides cakes.

So I was kind of bummed.  But then my boys offered to make a cake instead, and I thought that might be just as fun!  So we flipped through books and internets and each found some inspiration and went on from there- one cake for the boys, and one for the girl.   I’m not going to post recipes here- it would just take too much time, but I did want to document the event with a (largish) photo dump.

Tonight at the auction, I had to reassure several people that the boys (mostly James) really did make the cake, with only the tiniest bits of help from me.  Here’s proof!

Not one bit of egg shell did he drop.

Men and power tools….

They chose a strawberry cake…

Being super helpful

Strawberry cake with lemon frosting that is.

Love this boy

Learning to frost

And then the final touches. (which made me cringe a bit- ohhh, so much sugar)

Very Proud.

Then it was mama’s turn.

Out of the way boys.

Then I forgot to take pictures for a few steps. I finished off the day with this.    (there be four layers underneath that there ganache)

And then had to tackle this…

But I wasn’t finished yet.

This morning was decoratin’ time, starting with baked raspberry meringue rosettes.

Dipped in chocolate ganache

And up into place.

Then to cover the gaps, I decided on raspberries.

But not just any old raspberries.

These were amazing- like little chocolate bombs of bliss.  I may have sneaked a few, or ten.

Then my own final touches.

I admit, this cake was a little bit over the top ridiculous, (all for a good cause of course) but I had so much fun making it, that I thought I would just throw this out there.  Would anyone out perhaps be interested in purchasing a cake from me, outside of an auction scenario? (now that sewing season has slowed down.)

I’m thinking fancy birthday/anniversary cakes, and of course it would have to be for local people.  But I do make a pretty good cake, if I do say so myself.

Let me know!  If there is enough interest, Climbing Vine might just be branching out!