Happy Birthday Girls

Our Holidays don't end with New Year's Day. We have our daughters birthdays in January. So after Christmas I am on full game getting ready for birthday parties, etc. We have a little party on their individual birthdays and then a bigger party with our friends and their friends on a day in between their birthdays. So I make a lot of cakes, I try to keep it small so we don't have a ton left over. These are a couple of the cakes I made.

It was great that I could utilize the leftover frosting from the monkey cake. My daughter said she wanted a flower, my Mom suggested sunflower. Hey- perfect. Good idea Mom! I am blessed to have my Mother around. She is a very wise woman and a walking encyclopedia. Really- she could blow Jeopardy out of the water. Problem is, she would freeze up in front of the cameras. You can imagine with her wisdom that I call her at least once a day looking for advice on cooking, canning, child rearing...

We really enjoyed celebrating the children's birthdays. I count my blessings to know that I have two beautiful children. Even though I complain about the challenges of raising children sometimes, they are of course, the apples of my eye.
Isn't that a cool card that my brother and his wife sent my daughter? The ferris wheel spins around.

Confetti White Cake
Cooks Illustrated recipe found here at Epicurious.

2 1/4 cups cake flour (9 ounces), plus more for dusting the pans
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites (3/4 cup), at room temperature
2 teaspoons Marachino cherry juice
1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar (12 1/4 ounces)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened but still cool

Set oven rack in middle position. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment or waxed paper rounds. Spray the paper rounds.

Combine milk, egg whites, and vanilla extract and maraschino juice into a small bowl, and mix with fork until blended.

In a seperate bowl mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Blend at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no powdery streaks remaining.

Add all but 1/2 cup of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer) for 1 1/2 minutes. Add remaining 1/2 cup of milk mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Be sure to scrape down sides of bowl occassionally to make sure everything is incorporated. Fold in sprinkles.

Divide batter evenly between two prepared cake pans. Bake until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 23 to 25 minutes. Let cakes rest in pans for 10 minutes. Loosen from sides of pans with a knife, if necessary, and invert onto wire racks. Reinvert onto additional wire racks. Let cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours before frosting.