"Who's Counting" Cake

My sweet in-laws celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary a few days ago. 50 years is an impressive accomplishment these days!  Some of their friends had a surprise dinner party for them. They had no idea and were completely surprised! Philip and I offered to take care of the dessert. I made the cake and Phily made the ice cream. They both turned out really yummy.....

"Who's Counting" Cake

Source: adapted from the Martha Stewart Web Site. For original recipe click here

I was looking through Martha Stewart's Living magazine the other day and ran across this creative recipe for cakes in the shape of numbers. Great for birthdays and anniversaries! I was thrilled to find this....perfect for the upcoming anniversary party. Here is how it turned out....

Let me start by saying that if you follow Martha's recipe....be sure to make the cake batter and frosting in 2 batches or in a large mixer. The recipe makes a lot of batter and frosting!

All the delicious items for homemade cake

Whisk the dry ingredients

 3 cups of whole milk

 Add the vanilla to the whole milk. I use a vanilla bean paste - you can substitute that for regular vanilla.

Cream the butter and sugar

Add the dry ingredients

Add the milk mixture

Beat the egg whites until they look like........

this....nice and fluffy! Add them to the batter.

Pour into cake pans and bake!

Use a cake tester to make sure they are completely baked in the middle.

 Once the cakes are cooled, download the number templates and cut the cakes.

 Tada! 

Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting

Source: adapted from Martha Stewart's Web Site. For the original recipe click here

 Heat the butter, sugar and salt until the sugar and salt are dissolved and butter melted.

Pour into mixing bowl and beat until it looks like......

 this! You should see a peak when you lift the beater. It takes about 10 minutes.

 Add the butter in small pieces. Don't panic when it starts to look like cottage cheese (I did!). The next step smooths it out.

Add the vanilla (again, I always use the paste!) and switch to paddle attachment and beat for about 3 minutes until all the air bubbles are gone.

I decided to add a little yellow food coloring...so the frosting wasn't just plain white. Nothing against white - but I prefer a little color in my life!

Frost the tops and sides. Note that in Martha's recipe you stack the cakes at this point. I had a slight cake malfunction (hello!) and could only use one of them. All is not lost though....I am going to make cake balls with the undercooked and sunken in the middle cake and left over frosting. :)

 All frosted!

Now for the M&M's. I love these tasty little chocolate morsels. Since I am all about color coordination, I decided to buy packages of white and gold M&M's at Michael's and I bought a bag of regular M&M's and picked out the brown and yellow ones (ended up not using the yellow ones - looked better without them).

The recipe didn't call for this....but since the 50th anniversary is the golden anniversary I decided to add some gold sprinkles to the cake. Who doesn't love a little sugary sprinkle in their life?

The fun part....

The final product! I spaced my M&M's out a little more and didn't put M&M's on the sides like Martha's recipe. I was concerned it would just be too many M&M's in one bite of cake. I was glad I did it this way....the M&M's seemed just right! Overall, even with the cake malfunction, I had a lot of fun making this. I will do this one again someday!

The happy couple! I am blessed to have these two in my life. I love them dearly!