Goose's Bulldozer Cake

Oh my. It does seem hard to find the time to sit down at the computer for much of anything these days.

But I have finally managed to get here to put up the pictures of Goose's cake. I do hope to write a nice post about how wonderful his birthday was and get some pictures of our happy little three year old man up for everyone to enjoy. But for the moment, here is the little how-to on our favorite family bull-duh-zoder cake... uh, I mean bulldozer cake. ;o)

First, prepare one box of your favorite flavor cake mix. We prefer white cake around here, but for the actual bulldozer, you can get whatever you want. Divide the batter up into two mini loaf pans and one regular size bread loaf pan. If you don't have those handy, you can just use a 9x13 and do some creative cutting later.

And while you're in the cake making stage, you should prepare ahead one 9x13 chocolate cake and one box of chocolate pudding. You'll use these later.

Once the loaves are baked and cooled, cut the rounded tops off of all the loaves. I then put the big loaf upside down on my tray for the main dozer, and use one mini loaf for the cab, and one mini loaf for the scoop - that scoop one I like to cut at a bit of an angle to make it look scoop-like.

Voila!

The next step is to decorate the dozer. We like to make yellow frosting, use chocolate donut wheels and licorice tracks. I get a little tube of black decorating icing for the details.

Now it's time to get out that chocolate cake and chocolate pudding, for the "mud." I used about half of the cake, and maybe 2/3 of the pudding, though you can use as much as you want to make as much mud as you want. Personally, I think the mud is the tastiest part of the cake! Toss some chunks of the cake into a bowl, and spoon globs of the pudding on top. Then mix it all up until you are happy with the consistency (and taste!) of your mud.

Then start putting the mud around your decorated dozer. Have fun and make it look good. Dirt is always a good thing. ;o)

And that's about it. Now you should have a cute little bulldozer in a nice bed of muddy goo. We stick a few plastic construction figures around and add some finishing touches like the age and name of the birthday boy...

And the final result is one very happy three year old boy! The cake was by far the highlight of Goose's entire birthday. He was so stinking cute about it!

And just as a suggestion, we found that taking bites of the chocolate mud at the same time with bites of our favorite raspberry sorbet was REALLY good. Gourmet good. But that was just our grown up preference. The kids were happy to slop bites of all and every little bit in their mouths without differentiating between flavors.

So there you go. Bulldozer cake. It's a good thing.

And the birthdays are coming to an end...

In our home we do all our birthdays in the first part of the year. We start in January with Finny, then Punky comes in February. My Man gets March, then we take a little break in April (just in time for Easter) before Girly Pie gets her day in May. I get June, and then - last but certainly not least - little Mr. Goose gets the last birthday of the year in July. And then we get to take a little breather in between all the gifts and fun and specialness while we wind up for the holiday season. And then of course two weeks after Christmas we start all over again with Finny.

So tomorrow is my sweet baby boy's big day. Goose will be "free ears owd" tomorrow. But if you ask him, he'll most likely tell you he'll be "free ears owd on my birfday cake."

Goose is over the top ecstatic over the prospect of his big cake. I like to do big, special cakes for the kids every year, and Goose has requested a bulldozer cake (actually he wants a "bull-duh-zoder" cake) for his third birthday. I made just such a cake for Punky's third birthday actually, so I find it pretty sweet and endearing that Goose wants the same thing his biggest bro did way back when. ;o)

I'm already in the baking and building process. I'll post pics of the final product when it's all done.

But needless to say, we're very, VERY excited around here for our little man. And he's very, VERY excited for his bull-duh-zoder cake. Oh, and to turn free ears owd, too. Of course.

Birthday round two...

And did I mention that this last Sunday, almost a week after my actual birthday, my super sweet and sneaky hubby - with help and support from my best friend and my mother - threw me my first total surprise party!?

Just when I thought my birthday was totally over and behind me. It was great. I don't think I've ever been as surprised as I was when I walked into my own kitchen after church and saw all my friends standing there yelling "SURPRISE!" to me. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. ;o) Poor Girly Pie and Goose were completely shocked and confused.

So thanks guys. I've now been humbled. I didn't really think I could ever be totally surprised like that.

For once, I am happy to say I was wrong. ;o)