Cake Envy

Photo by Solo, Creative Commons 'share alike' and 'attribution' license.

Cake envy: I've got it, big time.

Every few months, I want it to be my birthday. I want a big, round cake with birthday candles and frosting. I want the people I love to be in once place, gawking at a gorgeous cake.

But that's not going to happen until October, so I had better think of different reasons for turning my jealousy into a yummy creation.

In the last two weeks, a number of food bloggers that I follow have posted gorgeous pictures of cakes, some for birthdays, some as practice for wedding cakes they'll make, now that it's the start of bridal season, and some just for fun.

My favorite is this coconut cream ice box cake by Sevenspoons. This picture of a slice of the cake on Flickr is what initially drew me in. Isn't it gorgeous? You can see the layers of homemade blackberry sauce, the toasted coconut flakes on top, and the layers upon layers of coconut pastry cream.

Then, a friend who does not live nearby started posting pictures on Facebook from cake decorating classes. She's been practicing rosettes and other piping techniques, and her photos are killing me.

Design Sponge had a guest blogger show off her German chocolate cake—not my favorite cake in the world, but it was yet another instance of cake madness.

And on it went.

Tonight I'm going to pull together some recipes, turn out a few shopping lists, and start gathering up the ingredients I'll need to make a few of these for graduations, welcome-home celebrations, birthdays, and a few other upcoming events.