Aaron's grandma is in town from England and we held a family barbecue at our house just for her. Jess and her boys were also in town for the joyous occasion.
The night before and morning of I spent making a cake for Mama. It's her birthday a bit later this month but having everyone together would be a nice time to celebrate.
I made this DELICIOUS Strawberry Lemon Coconut Cake. It turned out divine and was the first time I had requests for more but it had already been devoured. The lemon butter cream frosting is a little time consuming as you heat it on a stove over boiling water and then whip the egg whites for about 10 minutes to get it into a meringue constancy. Well worth it though.
A couple tricks i've learned when making cakes is to first cut a circle of cardboard the size of the prepared cake. (I used a diaper box as seen in the picture below). Place the cake on the cardboard and then prepare it. It helps keep the cake sturdy and allows me to decorate my cake on my lazy susan. As seen above, I can then easily transfer the decorated cake onto my serving tray with no problems.
Another tip is when cutting cake and dealing with layers. I have come across this fabulous little tool (its hard to see but is in the top right picture below). You set it to the height you want and it cuts perfectly through the cake. No crumb mess and perfectly level. Brilliant!
When working with layers with preserves, put the preserves on first and then in order to put on the frosting without making a huge mess, simply put frosting into a frosting bag and pipe on the cake in a circular motion (seen below)
For dinner I was grilling bbq chicken, made a cucumber dip (cucumbers courtesy of my mom's garden), cut fruit and then headed out to my own garden to see what was available. I ended up coming in with fresh corn, red potatoes, carrots and zucchini. I find great joy in the blessings and accomplishments of having a garden. This was one of those days.
I made honey roasted potatoes and grilled my zucchini with seasonings.
Picture time of course!
Grandma had never met her great grandchildren Rachael, Lucas and Joseph until this trip.
The cousins had so much fun playing together
Early Happy Birthday Celebrations!
Love it!!! I haven't even downloaded any of my pics yet. I was so bummed that I started feeling ill and couldn't eat more of your awesome cake BUT I did eat some that mum bought home the next day!:)
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