Danny's Double-Duty Cake

On Saturday, we celebrated Easter with our families.  Everyone was available and we took the opportunity to enjoy some good food and visit with each other.  Danny's birthday was on Sunday, so I also took this opportunity to (secretly) celebrate his birthday as well...but he'd find out about THAT later.  

The guests assembled and we sat down for a wonderful Easter brunch, complete with super colorful deviled eggs.  

When we finished our meal, the kids had the opportunity to look for eggs and baskets and play with their fun new toys.  Then, it was time for cake.  Danny had no idea that we were actually celebrating his birthday too.  And I had a little bit of challenge coordinating an Easter cake AND a Captain America cake, which was his request this year.  (Last year, I made TWO cakes for him.  A Sherlock Holmes and an R2D2 cake...wasn't going to do that again this year. Heaven forbid I start a tradition!!!)

So, I found two cakes online that I thought were too cute not to try and/or BLEND!!!  So here's what I came up with.  This cute little lamb is on the outside of the cake.

I told Danny that this was his birthday cake and asked him to pose with it.  If you look closely enough, you can kind of tell that he's really not THAT excited about this cake.  I mean, he requested a Captain America cake.  This was a lamb.  But he was a GOOD sport.

This was the time that we unveiled the decorating that our daughter Josie and Danny's mom, Marcia, had done.  Okay...the birthday celebration was beginning to unfold.

Then I cut into the cake and everything was right with the world.  It all made sense.  Easter celebration on the outside and Danny's birthday on the inside.  Phew!!!  How did I do that?  I followed these steps. I used a red velvet cake recipe and just colored (or didn't color) the batter.  It took some concentration to assemble the cake, but overall it was very easy to do.  I'm sure this will be a popular option for the 4th of July celebrations as well.   

 Happy Birthday, Danny!!  Thanks for being such a great sport!  We love you so!