Sam bakes a cake

For the Blue and Gold Banquet, the tradition here is for the boys to provide the desserts by baking a cake with their parents. The theme for our Banquet was "Military" so the cakes had to have a military theme. We made a tank cake and thought it was going to go over great but we weren't the only ones with the tank idea. Most of the cakes were tanks in different forms. There were a couple of fort cakes with toy soldiers defending them. There was a camoflauge cake with different colored coconut for grass and there was even a helicopter cake. I'm pretty sure that boy had way too much help from his parents but it looked great.


On Wednesday, when Kyle, Analee and Jacob were at the church for their different activities, Sam and I baked the cake. He thought it was gross to break the egg because he didn't want to get the yoke on his fingers but he did it anyway.

He was very adamant that he do as much as possible and I was more than happy to just instruct and supervise. I only took over in a couple of places when he got nervous about what needed to be done.

He tried spraying the pan with Pam but asked me to take over that part. At first, we were going to bake an extra large cake and cut it in half. The first half would be for the base of the tank and the second half we would cut out the round top part (I don't know what it is called). After getting the batter all mixed and poured into the pan, I discovered it wouldn't fit into my oven. My oven here is smaller than the one I had in Minnesota. So we had to put the batter into a 9x13 pan and a round pan.



While pouring the batter into the first extra large pan, Sam, in classic Sam style, told me that the pan was a village and the Pam spray was the village army and the batter was the victorious invading army that took over and destroyed the village. A fitting military story, I thought, especially since all players in his little scenario were coming together to create a tank cake.

After it was baked, I wrapped it up and the next day I borrowed a tip from the TV show "Amazing Cakes" or the "Ace of Cakes", something like that, and I first spread the cake with a light layer of white frosting and then put it in the fridge to sit. After a couple of hours, I took it out and mixed the carmel frosting I bought with green food coloring to get the perfect tank color and frosted and built the tank. I used a Pirouette cookie for the gun. When the boys came home from school, they loved it and said it looked "So cool!". Which, of course, is what I was going for. Now, I do not at all profess to be a fantastic cake decorator but I had fun making this with Sam and finishing it.

It looks good, if I do say so myself. The Banquet was on Thursday and we had way too much cake for the occasion so we had plenty of cake to bring home. Both boys received awards and pins and they had a good time.