Cake Surprise! (by Bethany)

I am not artistic. I think I get it from my dad, who loves to draw these awful pictures of people with crosses for eyes and pig noses. 

But my mom always made cute birthday cakes for us every year - nothing fancy - but with words piped on with frosting and stuff. I always thought it was really fun, so I tried to do the same. 

My cakes ended up looking, well, less than impressive. 

Paul has slightly more artistic ability than I do, so I had him try one year.

It's supposed to be a princess. Looks more like the Statue of Liberty!

That's when I decided the thing to do was to make the cake pretty on the INSIDE instead. It didn't take any artistic ability, and was always a fun surprise! I got some ideas from relatives, friends, facebook, and pinterest, then adapted them to work with whatever I had.

This cake even looks fun on the outside, with rainbow chip frosting.

Surprise! 6 layers of rainbow cake! 

I used 2 white cake mixes, prepared the batter as directed, split it into 6 bowls, mixed in food coloring, and baked them in separate pans. (I don't have 6 cake pans, so it took a while!)

If it's not chocolate, it's not dessert, so of course I used chocolate frosting between each layer, and added a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Grace loved it!

Another year, I did this cake:

I LOVE the sprinkles in a stencil idea, and the M&M's add some color too. See, no artistic ability necessary!

Surprise! I baked the cake in 4 layers, then cut a hole out of the middle 2 (after they were cooled), and put M&M's in when I was building it. Fun, though the M&Ms did get a little soggy!

Grace isn't the only one I make surprise cakes for. Alice turned 3 this week.

She was looking pretty intently at that cake even before she knew what was inside...

Colors! I used yellow cake mix, since I think it tastes better than white.

I mixed it into 4 different colors, then scooped them into the pan using a cookie dough scooper.

It blended together however it wanted to, and turned out pretty cool.

It was a hit!

My kids love the cakes I make for their birthdays, and it's fun to experiment and be creative! Anyone else have any fun, easy cake ideas for the artistically challenged? Send 'em my way!