Summertime is a very busy birthday season for our family. My husband, son, and I all have summer birthdays. We also have six other extended family members (siblings and parents) that have summer birthdays. Combine the birthdays with the other summertime celebrations (like the Fourth of July) and we get a summer full of parties!
We recently celebrated our son’s third birthday. We had a very nice and intimate party with just our family (mommy, daddy, birthday boy, and baby sister) on the morning of our son’s birthday. Daddy had to leave for work mid morning, so I planned a birthday party with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents the following evening (when daddy would be home). The party would be simple with cupcakes accompanied by coffee, tea, or water. I am known for my desserts, especially cakes, on both sides of our families. Over the course of this year, I have made an effort to make everyone (my siblings, my husband’s siblings and both our parents) cakes (or some dessert) for their birthday. Given that I have made a lot of cakes over the past year, I like to have an element of surprise with all my cakes.
After making my son an ice cream cake for his actual birthday, I decided to make a simple cake that almost everyone loves: devil’s food cake (my absolute favorite chocolate cake of all time). For ease and simplicity, I like to make cupcakes for larger parties and since there would be twenty people (aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents), cupcakes definitely make cake distribution a breeze!
I have made a couple of traditions over the last three years for my son’s birthdays. First I always make an amazingly rich and decadent chocolate cake for my son’s birthday partys. For his first birthday, I wanted that classic photograph of the one year old with chocolate cake and icing all over his face and hands!
(To be continued…)