Birthday Rims

We have a birthday tradition at our house of waking up to a donut cake on the morning of your birthday.  We stick a candle in the top of the "cake", sing Happy Birthday, and dig in.  I think it's a great way to begin a birthday. (sugar = happiness in my world)

This year I thought Chase probably needed a birthday-rimmed glass of milk to go along with his donut cake.  These rims could easily be adapted for any holiday by varying the color of nonpareils/sprinkles.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

Do you like my ghetto cake picture?  Turns out in the craziness of Chase's birthday I completely forgot to take a picture of his six layer "bone" cake.  So you get a picture of a cake that's lost a layer, fallen on it's side, sat out for a day and a half, and been 75% devoured.  I should probably roll one of my sweatpant legs up right now, tie a bandana around my head, and ask people to call me "K-dizzle".  If you can overlook my ghetto-ness today I'll reward you with a fantastic chocolate frosting recipe.

homie.

This buttercream is great because it tastes nothing like butter.  You don't feel sick as you eat it or want to scrape most of it off.  This is a great go-to chocolate frosting recipe. Also, my dad told me over and over what a great chocolate cake this was, so I'd like to public thank Mr. Duncan Hines for his boxed Devil's Food mix (x2) in helping make the ultimate chocolate cake so ridiculously easy.

This recipe frosted my entire 6-layer cake (barely).  If you want to do great dollops of frosting on 24 cupcakes you should probably make the whole recipe; otherwise, half it because it makes loads. 

Funfetti (Skeleton) Cupcakes

Parties are uncomfortable for me.  Partly because I'm socially awkward, and partly because people usually end up discussing things from the 80's or 90's like Chips (apparently a show and not a delicious snack) and funfetti cupcakes (apparently a rite of childhood passage).  Not having really grown up in this country, half the time I have no idea what's going on during these conversations, so I usually nod and smile and scan the room for something to stuff in my mouth so I don't have to say anything.

Would you believe me if I told you I'd never had a funfetti cupcake before last weekend?  I don't like sprinkles so the idea of them in cupcakes never really appealed to me. 

Turns out they're pretty good.


I made these for my little boy's 4th birthday.  He loves bones and skeletons and all kinds of "body" things.  I love seeing his face light up when I make him something special.  I'm thinking you should probably make these for Halloween with black/orange sprinkles inside and chocolate frosting under the skeleton topper.  (If you don't happen to have a body-loving 4 year old.)

This recipe isn't really "homemade" because it uses a boxed mix, but it lets you add your own sprinkles to a white mix, so you can use any color or combination you want.