And so it begins...

I boarded the birthday insanity train again this morning...and now any blogging about the Babyhotel or life in general will have to be postponed til after this coming Friday (when my baby turns 2?!? What?!?)

In the meantime I'll be busy test-driving 3 cake recipes (carrot, apple and chocolate), 3 frosting recipes (two of which are dairy-free to accomodate Miles-through-me) and two homemade dairy-free ice cream recipes. Yeah...um...we bought an ice cream maker tonight because I can't stand the thought of a birthday party where I can't eat ice cream. I was all kinds of excited to discover there are ice cream recipes for those of us who can't handle the cow's milk...bring on the coconut milk, baby! (I might try a little sheep's milk ice cream too if I have time...which I won't because I've left it all til the last minute as usual...and I'm toying with the idea of creating a birthday banner as well, God help us all).

I also ordered $80 worth of food coloring this morning...again because I'm super last-minute and live in a country that 1. thinks food coloring is the work of the devil and 2. has an utterly ridiculous cost-of-living. So yay for that. But I am getting super excited about trying out the tractor cake. We'll use the test chocolate cake to give ourselves a dry run on the tractor forming to finally decide whether we're going the 2D-sheet cake route or the 3D-build-it-up-with-cakes-out-of-bread-pans route.

Unfortunately I've also managed to fill my evenings this week relatively full...so all this testing will likely get a wee bit stressful and have G ready to slit my throat before party-time actually arrives...especially since we've also yet to purchase a single present. (Did I say last-minute? Yeah...at least G put the kibosh on the personalized t-shirt this year...so no more rush orders to get a t-shirt within 2 days this year - even though I allowed a full 4 days lead-time when the bright idea struck this year.)

In any case, I'll keep y'all posted on the taste-testing...here's the to-do list (unless somebody else has just the perfect cake recipe they'd like to share):

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream - in progress
Vanilla Bean & Rum Ice Cream
Carrot Cake
Chocolate Cake
Apple Cake
Cinnamon Marshmallow Frosting (to accompany apple cake)
Vegan Fluffy Buttercreme Frosting
That's The Best Frosting I've Ever Had

And this is my current favorite frosting if the others don't cut it for me:
Whipped Cream Cream Cheese Frosting