Make Grandma feel special on her 95th birthday with a specially decorated cake.
Not many people live to be 95 years old, and when your grandma reaches that milestone, you should make the celebration special. A cake with 95 candles on top could pose a fire hazard, as well as being logistically problematic to find space on top of the cake for the candles. Skip the scores of candles, and opt for a decorated cake with a single candle for the milestone. The cake decorations you choose should match your grandma's personality. Does this Spark an idea?
Through the Years Cake
Use a rectangular cake and pictures of your grandma to show how she has grown over her lifetime. Take a photograph of your grandma from her youth and a current image and send them to a local bakery or Internet site which can scan and print out edible cake topper images. Cover the entire cake with a base of white frosting and place the two images on top of the cake, side-by-side or at the cake's corners. Use sugar letters or write in icing "Through the Years" on top of the cake and "Happy 95th Birthday, Grandma!" Add decorative edging in a contrasting icing color if desired.
Beach Cake
If Grandma loves the beach, create a cake to resemble a sandy shore. Cover an entire rectangular cake with white cake icing. Press vanilla wafer cookie crumbs onto the sides and half of the top of the cake. Drape a piece of blue fruit leather or a piece of blue tinted fondant over the other half of the top of the cake to resemble the ocean. Scatter chocolate seashells around the "beach" if desired. Write in butter cream icing on the fruit leather or fondant with the writing tip of a pastry bag, "Happy 95th Birthday, Grandma!"
Find a picture of Grandma at the beach, ideally from when she was a child. Cut the image of Grandma out of the photograph and glue it onto a piece of cardboard. Stand up the cardboard cutout on the "beach" portion of the cake to look like Grandma in her youth is playing on the beach. Press 95 small plain-flavored fish-shaped crackers or gummy fish candies into the icing around the edge of the cake. Alternatively, push the fish into the sides of the cake. These fish stand in for putting 95 candles on the cake. Be sure to point out to Grandma that there are 95 fish, one for each year of her life.
Hat's Off Cake
For a hat-loving grandmother, prepare a cake shaped like a hat. Stack a 6-inch diameter cake in the center of an 8-inch diameter cake. The bottom cake is the hat brim and the top cake is the crown of the hat. Frost both cakes in your grandma's favorite color, and tie a ribbon around the smaller cake for the "hat's" ribbon. Use either real ribbon or a fondant piece cut into a ribbon shape. Create dots or horizontal stripes along the ribbon of the hat with butter cream icing in a pastry bag fitted with a writing tip or star tip. Use one dot or stripe per year of Grandma's life for a total of 95 dots or stripes. These 95 dots will stand in for 95 candles on the cake for Grandma's 95th birthday.
Puzzle Cake
Crossword puzzles are a favorite of people of all ages. Cover the cake with white icing, and use black icing to create crossword puzzle squares large enough to put a sugar letter inside each box. Draw eight boxes in a row across the middle of the cake for the word "birthday." Place the sugar letters B, I, R, T, H, D, A and Y into each box. This will help to guide you as you create the boxes for "Happy" and "Grandma." Draw one box above the A in birthday for the H in happy. Draw three more boxes in a line going down from that box. Put the letters H, P, P and Y into the appropriate boxes to spell "happy" going down. Draw one box above the R in birthday and five boxes in a vertical row below it for the word "Grandma." Put the G in the box above the R then add the letters A, N, D, M and A to the boxes below it. Scatter any remaining sugar letters around the cake surface for additional decoration if desired. Press 95 small sugar letters around the sides of the cake. Turn the letters at angles when you push them into the icing on the side of the cake so that they can be seen as random letters rather than spelling out words. These letters each represent a year of the grandmother's life. For a rectangular cake, place 15 letters on each of the shorter sides and 30 on one longer side and 35 on the remaining longer side. If you do not have sugar letters, use any small sugar shapes to represent Grandma's 95 years.
Tags: cake with, sugar letters, your grandma, 95th Birthday, rectangular cake, 95th birthday, 95th Birthday Grandma