Sunrise Layer Cake

My son Mozely turned 1-years-old today.

One year ago, we were watching Lie to Me at home and I heard a pop (!).

I had just been telling everyone at work that the baby wasn’t coming out for at least a couple more weeks, based on the previous experience.

Boy, was I a naïve 2nd time mom.

Four hours and a 28 mile drive later I was frantically waiting for the doctor to show up so I could push, because there was absolutely NOTHING more important in the world than pushing, and those freaking #@$&% people just refused to let me do that. Until the doctor came.

I would have delivered to any creature with opposable thumbs at that moment.

20 minutes after that doctor finally showed up, I screamed and pushed and

this is what I got.

I guess it was a good trade. Before that moment I wasn’t totally sure.

We did one of those “Can you come eat some cake in 5 minutes?” thingamajigs. I couldn’t really call it a party, because it wasn’t organized.

Maybe even as organized as this cake, as it was in the early stages.

In Hawaii we’re lucky enough to call some people our family, even if we’re not actually related, and Mozely’s uncles and aunties and their kids came. I felt guilty about not being organized and decided to buy some pizza at the last minute. And my neighbor found an unused bag of party stuff.

Ok, so maybe I can call it a party after all. Maybe parties are just wherever you can be with everyone else.

It was Ethan’s birthday too. I’ve known Ethan since he was, like, two, or maybe just two feet tall, and definitely since he told us funny things about his ears.

I didn’t buy Mozely any presents. Instead I spent most of the day making his cake.

Layers: Strawberry (with beet for coloring), orange, mango, guava, coconut. Lilikoi curd and coconut Italian buttercream between each layer. I’m calling it a sunrise cake. I don’t think I pulled off the coloring perfectly, but for from scratch and trying not to use food coloring—I think it was a good effort. The vegan orange layer completely started squishing and falling apart so I will put that layer up higher next time. For a moment I thought I had a catastrophe for a cake, but some firming up in the fridge helped its looks. A little bit.

The Lilikoi curd was just amazing. I also loved the coconut frosting. I’m still looking for a great mango cake recipe. For some reason, that’s the one that doesn’t cook up so well. However, in the sunrise layer cake, the flavors melded and just tasted light and fruity with a tang of the curd. It worked.

Recipes (click on the links)

I halved each of the recipes to make just one 9” circular cake pan.

Strawberry Cake (I added 1/4 Cup of beet puree to intensify the color.)

Guava Cake 

mango cake: yellow box cake with mango juice instead of water.

Orange Vegan Cake

Coconut Cake and Coconut Frosting

Lilikoi curd

I cut each layer in half horizontally and some I threw away because of the unevenness of the cakes, and really, I had enough layers that there was some to spare. Luckily. Lilikoi curd and frosting are in between each. The cake wasn’t as beautiful as my drawing. But I did have a vision.

I spent all day on this cake. There’s something BIG inside of me that wants to feed people. If you’re reading this, you probably know the feeling. Food has a lot of power.

This week I wanted to let you know there are ways YOU can get involved with Share Our Strength, the organization that works to help keep kids fed, even during the summer. I teach at a school where almost half of our students receive some kind of financial assistance for lunch and breakfast. During the summer, many kids don’t have a place to eat a good lunch every day!

Share Our Strength brings in multiple ways to get involved. There are event fundraisers, bake sales, blogger campaigns, and more. Click Here to see how you can contribute. This summer there is a dollar of dollar match for your donation.

Yahoo! is partnering with Foodbuzz to contribute $20,000 to Share Our Strength on behalf of the reading and blogging community. Help support this donation by:

1. Making Yahoo! your homepage now.
2. Sharing the campaign with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.