United Cakedom: painting

In May of 1962 Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to the President of the United States in a sexy sultry way that has made history.

First it was one of her last public performances, but mostly because of the alleged affair between her and JFK.

Not gonna lie I love a good conspiracy! Did they have an affair? Did JFK have anything to do with her death? We will never know!

If I don’t step away I can drive myself crazy with that sort of stuff. So, I will leave the conspiracies to theorists and I will get on with the cake making!

I am a little behind in posting this cake, it was about a month ago that a friend’s son was turning 21, and he requested this cake for his birthday.

The cake was a marbled vanilla and chocolate tray bake with a layer of buttercream before the top layer of white sugar paste.

Our friend gave me the stencil- that was super useful! So, with the stencil and my cake painting knowledge from Sprinklebakes I made this:

It is a simple design, but it has a bold stylish effect. The color pastes were gently mixed with a little vodka to make it easy to spread out and it turned out exactly how we all wanted it too!

I also gave them a pan of chili brownies because they were the same friends that requested chili brownies and told me they weren't hot enough! So, this time I added a bit more chilies to the brownies and they said they did have a bit more of a kick to them! I guess I will have to up my game again!

As usual it was a British word first. I do have a discussion about once a week about words I use as an American over the words used around me here in England.

Soccer is shorthand for association. As in Association Football, it was a way to distinguish it from rugby. Originally Britain had Rugby Football shortened to “ruggers” and Association Football was shortened to “soccer.”

It's not an American word at all, it was a British word... “And the Brits used it often—until, that is, it became too much of an Americanism for British English to bear." (Uri Friedman: a senior associate editor at The Atlantic)

I do find it interesting that what makes America different is not what America did, but what other countries did to make it different.

No matter if it’s called soccer or football I am staying up for tonight’s Ghana vs USA and eating a slice of this cake I made in support of the USA team!

It’s a basic vanilla cake with red and blue swirls. It has a vanilla buttercream underneath the fondant. I used blue and red food color paste with a little vodka with a stencil of the USA soccer shield!

They have a tough first set, but I think they will put up a good fight!