Book Learnin'

Birthdays are a great excuse for some culinary creativity. My Dad marked the beginning of another year yesterday, and we were lucky enough to celebrate it with him, so I used it as an opportunity to turn another page in my birthday-cake-making book.

Now, everybody has their traditional favorite birthday dinner in our family and you can't mess with that, but as long as the cake is the right flavor, well, anything goes. Since Dad is a writer and we were giving him some reading/writing accessory gifts, I decided to stick with that theme and make a cake that looked like a book. What a novel idea!

It's amazing what you can learn when you get an idea in your head of something you want to do, but have no concept of how to carry it out. Who knew there's a whole culture around edible ink out there? I didn't, until the day before yesterday, but I'm learning quickly. For instance, if you're going to do this kind of thing, you have to have a dedicated printer, or else get someone who does to print your design for you (which is what I did).

I just designed the pages on the home computer and then had them printed on edible rice paper. When you place the paper on your frosted cake, it's supposed to dissolve into the frosting. The piece of paper I had was really thick, so that didn't really happen, but everyone ate it anyway. The cake flavor was a disappointment -- boring chocolate cake with a buttercream that was too sweet -- although the design got rave reviews. I may not make the bestseller list this way, but at least I'm having fun...