A week and a half ago, my son turned 6 months old. I'm not one of those crazy mothers that will throw a party every month, but I do like cake and my mom, granny, and sister just happened to be coming to visit that day. I saw a wonderful idea on "The Bump," a website for moms that has lots of great people full of advice, and I had to try it. The idea was a half birthday cake.
It's actually quite a simple thing to make and it looks really cool once it's finished. All you do is bake a round cake and cut it in half. I used a box mix of red velvet, but used the method of mixing it found in the book "What's New Cupcake?" You take the mix, 4 eggs, 1 cup buttermilk, and however much oil the box calls for. You end up with a very moist, non-crumbly cake.
I poured about half of the batter into a greased 9-inch round cake pan and used the rest of the batter to make cupcakes. Bake the cake for about 30-35 minutes and the cupcakes for 15 minutes. Let the cake cool completely. Once it's cool, I used a bread knife to even out the top (go ahead and just eat those pieces) and then cut the cake in half as evenly as you can. I then put a generous layer of cream cheese frosting on one half and then stuck the other half on top so you get half of a circle. Frost the rest of the cake and decorate to your liking.
The cream cheese frosting I used was from the "Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook" but I made some modifications, mostly because I ran out of ingredients, but it totally works! I doubled the recipe to have enough frosting to decorate the cake and the cupcakes.
Ingredients for double batch:
2 8 oz. packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup butter, softened
6-7 cups powdered sugar (the original recipe calls for 11-12 cups but it gets WAY too sweet)
I put the butter and cream cheese in a stand mixer and let it go on medium speed until it looks fluffy. Then add in the powdered sugar gradually. Mix it all completely and enjoy!
The cake was a hit and it was hard to keep Morgan from digging his little mitts into it.
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