Last weekend we had a belated second birthday party for Elijah and his friends at the downtown Fire Station in Frederick. His birthday lands three days before Christmas so we decided to wait to have the “kid” party when people weren’t so busy.
It was great! The firemen and women showed us around the station, we got to sit in the fire engine (best part), see a fire man get dressed in all of his gear and see inside an ambulance. We also got to witness a 911 call and an ambulance driving out of the station.
The cake:
My mom found a fire truck cake mold at a local craft store so I made the cake in the shape of a fire truck. One of Elijah’s favorite cakes that I made over the holidays for the Just Desserts for Limited Diets e-book was the Carrot Cake with Vanilla Icing. So I used that recipe but ended up doubling it because the pan was pretty big and said it fit a two layer cake mix.
When we took it out of the mold, it ended up looking like a rectangle with a point at one end because the fire truck imprint didn’t show up on the cake. I realized that I was going to have to decorate it so that people could see what it was! I guess I just hadn’t thought about this before I made the cake.
Natural Red Food Coloring:
I had already planned on using the Vanilla Frosting recipe from GNOWFGLINS.com. I then decided to make the wheels and ladder out of raisins (since the cake has raisins in it, I thought this was a good choice). Then, I was trying to figure out how to make red frosting without red food coloring to outline the shape of the truck.
I decided beet juice was the was to go so I sent Dave to the store. We have a juicer so we juiced the beets to make the juice. It didn’t take very much to turn the icing bright red-fuchsia. My mom had a cake decorating kit that I used to outline the truck in red icing and it turned out adorable.
Here are the recipes:
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