Happy Birthday Cakes

My mother-in-law and brother-in-law had birthdays on Monday & Tuesday respectively. I offered to make cakes for them, two separate cakes for their joint party. I didn't want my MIL to slave away on a cake for BIL, nor did I want her to have a store-bought cake. And I didn't want them to have to share a cake like they have in years' past. Yes, I deserve a wonderful daughter/sister-in-law award for my thoughtfulness & hard work. No, not really. I love to cook & bake, especially for special occasions and especially when I can share the goodies, then send them home with the birthday people, thus sparing myself all the extra calories!

So, yesterday was baking day. I knew my MIL loved pineapple so I made a Pineapple Mandarin Orange cake that I've made many times for my Mom for her b-day. It's light, fluffy and delicious. The recipe I always use is on a heavily stained page in an old church cookbook but I found the identical recipe on allrecipes, so here's the link. And here's a not very good pic-


I couldn't exactly cut a piece pre-party just so I could take a picture. And I didn't even think about taking pictures of the cut cake at the party.

And for my BIL...well, he loves chocolate and his favorite cake is dirt cake, that creamy, pudding-y, oreo 'cake' stuff. But, dirt cake was one of the many desserts that was served last week at our big family Thanksgiving meal. So, I decided to do a little something different but still in the same flavor family. I made this chocolate cake for my daughter's b-day a few months ago, minus the candy bars. It's a delicious cake, probably the best chocolate cake I've ever had. Very moist & rich but SO easy since you just use cake mix & pudding mix. And the frosting is just the best. It's an easy cream cheese/cool whip concoction that is the perfect consistency and I love that there's no butter or shortening in it. The recipe calls for crushed candy bars in the frosting, but I used crushed oreos instead and made it kind of a 'cookies & cream' cake.



For this double layered cake, I used this handy old round pan that I bought at Goodwill a while back.



It's an old "Ovenex" pan with a rotating "slider" that makes the cake pop right out of the pan so easily. I only wish I would've found two so I could bake both layers at once! (the picture was taken right after I removed the cake, it is not normally filthy & rusty)

The cakes were a hit, everyone went home fat & happy. Yay!