Maia and I baked a nest cake over the weekend, ostensibly to celebrate Daphne's half birthday (three and a half!), which is tomorrow. But, really, we were just looking for a good excuse to try out our nest cake idea.
The nest is a lemon bundt cake, the eggs are made out of ice cream, and the bird is a special Maia-drawn addition.
We are big into nests right now. We have a couple (pretend ones) on our spring nature table. And I included recipes for both nest cookies and a pretzel nest snack in my spring crafts eBook.
Maia and I chose the lemon cake recipe together after I vetoed a chocolate bundt cake as too rich and she vetoed an applesauce bundt cake as too Autumn-y. We both concurred that lemon sounded fresh and tasty and perfect for spring.
Maia did much of the lemon zesting, measuring, and mixing. At seven, she is a joy to cook with and is definitely coming into her own in the kitchen.
We do need a shorter kitchen stool for her, though....
While the cake was baking, Maia drew a bluebird for the bird's nest.
For the ice cream eggs, we used strawberry ice cream, oreo cookie, and vanilla. We used our hands to quickly shape a couple of large scoops of ice cream into each egg—a cold process!
This egg idea could have used a little more development. I wanted to roll them in coconut, to make them easier to handle and shape, but Daphne doesn't like coconut. My next idea was to roll them in chocolate sprinkles, but we couldn't find any in the cupboard. So... The ice cream eggs are naked. Deliciously so, of course, but maybe slightly less finished looking than they could have been.
The eggs went into the center of the nest and the mama bluebird perched on the edge of the nest.
Here's a view of the back of the paper bird showing the bamboo skewer that held it up in the cake. Maia also taped on a couple of wooden craft sticks to keep the paper from curling.
The nest cake was lemony delicious and perfect with the ice cream. Daphne's half birthday was well celebrated and spring was heralded!
