Happy Birthday little star, do you know how loved you are?

Today is my second oldest son's Birthday. He turned 11, just after midnight. I have always had good intention with Birthdays in the past, making the cake my kids requested, getting them their favorite ice cream, and doing my best to get them their hearts desires, (or at least something cool), but we usually are unable to celebrate the special day until either the Sunday before the Birthday or the Sunday afterwards, due to work and school schedules. This year, I found a cute idea of decorating your child’s bedroom door for their birthday. One particular woman had used various sizes of polka dots and "polka dots a door" for her loved ones birthdays. I thought it was so cute, that I decided to do my own version. I used stars in various sizes, and coordinating alphabet stickers, and "starred" his door this morning, (he actually didn't notice right away).

Last night, my husband was actually home, so we decided to celebrate Z's Birthday then, rather than wait till Sunday. He requested Chinese food, so we ran and got some from our favorite restaurant, which was actually funny, because he didn't like anything but the pot stickers. I asked him a few weeks ago what his favorite breakfast in the world would be, and he said m&m buttermilk pancakes and bacon. So last week I picked up the items to make them, and surprised him this morning with his super special (albeit unhealthy) breakfast.

A tradition I mentioned, is letting the kids choose what cake (or pie as the case may be) they would like to have for their Birthdays. I do my best to make their favorite. Well this year, Z asked for a lemon cake with "some sort of glaze or thin icing in the middle that tastes like orange". I suggested an orange pudding, and then orange butter cream on the top and sides. He agreed. Since this was a new cake for me, and one of my resolutions is to learn to actually make more cakes from scratch (note I can make 3 really amazing cakes from scratch, but it is because of their particular recipes). So I decided to make a sponge cake, since it is pretty much guaranteed success. I even used the bleached or "crap" flour as I have dubbed it. It turned out very well. On to the orange pudding. Now I have only made the lemon version for merengue pies, but all I had to do was switch to orange, it turned out well, who knew the boys would choose this week to actually eat the oranges I buy. So it was missing the orange zest, and sort of tasted soapy to me. I fixed it with some orange extract. It tasted marvelous! Then I poured it (still hot) onto the cake and refrigerated for about 15 minutes while I made the buttercream.

Looks so pretty!

                                                             

  Then I added my top layer, and frosted with white "orange" buttercream. I was a little worried that it was going to be strange tasting, but really it was a delight for my taste buds. I think next time; I would make an orange cake with orange pudding and frosting, and a lemon cake with lemon pudding and frosting. He asked for raspberry Sherbet to go along with his "Citrus cake", and thankfully due to his brother getting a mouth injury last week, and being on a soft diet, we had some in the house. He asked for art supplies in various mediums, so we got him a beading book, many different beads, a new bike helmet, bike gloves, and various drawing tools, some bakable clay, and a sports related video game. He was in absolute heaven.