If You Give a Cake a Cookie

This week we decided it was time to do my son, Ben's, teachers Half Birthday. Why a Half Birthday? Well primarily because my friend, Stephanie - our class lead, and the rest of us helping out in the class MISSED her real birthday. That was in September. So close to the start of the school year that honestly we didn't feel terrible about missing it - because we hardly had our backpack's on straight enough to have caught it. Yet at the same time - we LOVE LOVE LOVE Mrs. Burns and didn't want her to think we weren't "thinking" of her. So we counted 6 months from the month and had a party.

Now best laid plans are sometimes better then the actual happening. Stephanie contacted our favorite student teacher - Ms. Brown - who ALL the boys have a crush on (although Ben would deny this.........his friend, Malik, called him out on it by saying, "Dude you know you crush on her because we all think she is hot" - I even think she is very cute so he was totally fibbing). Anyway - Stephanie contacted Ms. Brown who helped her send out notes to the class asking for donations for a gift. Then I made a cake.......since we were buying her a gift card to a scrapping store I thought a cute Scrapbook Replica cake. Had it all planned out to the gumpaste scissors.


Then Ms. Brown let us know that while we could still do the party........it would also be the day they do the Multiplication Ice Cream party. You earn a scoop and/or topping for every times table you complete. Ben earned both scoops and 6 toppings with whipped cream - yea Ben!! Which seems weird since they did 0 - 12........where are the other toppings? So anyway - now we were doing the Birthday at the same time as the Ice Cream - as a parent we did the responsible thing and downsized the cake to a "Take Home Gift". Cake AND Ice Cream might be a party tradition, but it makes for a giant mess in the class and we didn't want to take away from the experience of what toppings they earned.

So the cake morphed. I was still thinking gumpaste scissors - but then I thought about the fact that it was very close to St. Pat's........and we are TOTALLY lucky to have such a Great Teacher.....and I just received a delivery of cutters.....and I was COMPLETELY surprised that the shamrock I bought was GIGANTIC!! and immediately thought "well that is as big as an 8" cake round......and I wanted to try out my cookie cutters and a few cookie recipes.......so why not use cookies to border the cake and top it with a cute Shamrock with a message?

Idea born. Cake Baked (I know Mrs. Burns a chocolate fan). Cookies Baked (I didn't know she was a shortbread cookie fan - bonus!). Cake Decorated!

Turned out pretty cute. A little icing flare at the bottom and the cake only took a few more minutes to decorate. Love the cookie thing. Ben came in as I was finishing and said in an unbelieving and thinking I had lost my mind voice (you know how kids do that?)...."Why would you put cookies on a cake?"....I said, "To decorate it and tell Mrs. Burns how lucky we are to have her teaching you." Ben thought for a minute and then said, "So she gets cake AND COOKIES TOO? She is the lucky one." followed by, "Are there any cookies left?"

This cake was Chocolate Chocolate Chip with a Chocolate Buttercream icing and small Cinnamon Shortbread Cookies and one giant Traditional Sugar Cookie.