Butter cream frosting is fantastic for piping designs and messages on cakes. But when I'm in a hurry, or short on powdered sugar and butter, 7-minute frosting is my choice.
I practically always have the ingredients for 7-minute frosting -- granulated sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and either corn syrup, cream of tartar, vinegar or lemon juice (these ingredients allow the egg whites to beat up nice and fluffy). Bonus, these ingredients are very economical, too! One batch of 7-minute frosting cost me about 35 cents. The same amount of butter cream frosting would have cost me about $1.75.
Today is my son's birthday, although we celebrated on Saturday. I had baked the layers on Friday and wrapped them in plastic. Then late Saturday afternoon, one of my daughters helped me make the 7-minute frosting, and place the M&Ms (leftovers from Hallowe'en) on top. The whole frosting/decorating took about 15 minutes, which is really pretty fast, for me.
Some years, my cakes look almost professional. Other years, colorful and cheerful are words that best describe my cakes. What matters most, I think, is that the cake tastes delicious, and everyone enjoys the celebration.
One of the gifts
a winter car emergency kit
One of my son's gifts was inspired from comments by Katie @ Life lived intentionally, on an earlier blog post about gifts on a small budget -- the car repair/emergency kit.
With winter on the horizon, a winter car emergency kit seemed appropriate for my son's birthday. The total cost for this "kit" was under $20.
In the basket, I put a bag of kitty litter (for traction when stuck in the snow), a snow and ice scraper, a road-side triangle reflector, a flashlight (with batteries), an emergency rations food bar, and an emergency blanket. I found the basket, flashlight, batteries, kitty litter, and snow/ice scraper at Dollar Tree. Finding so many items for just a dollar each was a great help to my budget.
Anyway, my son put the whole basket in the back of his car right away, and seemed very appreciative of the gift.
For the rest of the celebration, the 5 of us went out for Chinese food, then came home for cake and gifts. It was a fun evening, and I think the birthday guy had a great time!