Baked Donuts Birthday Cake and Valentine Preview

We have had a nice start to February. Last week we had a fun little celebration. Last week was the first night of the girl's youth group meeting here at our house, and it also happened to be my son's girlfriend's little sister's 15th birthday. So I thought a fun dessert was in order for the evening. I know the birthday girl is not a huge fan of run of the mill cake, so I thought I'd do something a little different, and make a cake out of doughnuts. I have doughnut pans for making baked donuts, and wanted to incorporate a cake mix style recipe. There are plenty of great cake mix baked doughnut recipes on Pinterest, they are all pretty similar, but I felt this one had a great tutorial - Funfetti Donuts. I used this recipe to make my donut cake.

The recipe is very easy, just mix together a box of Funfetti cake mix with 3/4 cup of buttermilk, 2 Tablespoons of melted butter, and 2 eggs. When the batter is mixed transfer to a gallon zip lock, and cut off the corner to pipe into greased donut pans. This recipe made an even dozen. Bake at 425 F. for about 8 minutes. Let donuts sit in pan for a couple of minutes until cool, then transfer to a cooling rack. Let the donuts completely cool before glazing.

For the glaze I combined two cups of powdered sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and with just enough milk to make it smooth, I start out with a few Tablespoons then add milk a tablespoon at a time until it reaches the desired consistency, thin enough to glaze, but still thick enough to be a good layer of icing. I also used a little pink food coloring. I diped the top half of each donut in the glaze, then set it back on the cooling rack, topped each donut with sprinkles, and let them dry a bit. Whenever I glaze I put a sheet of wax paper below the cooling racks to catch drips and make clean up easier. When the glaze had set up, I stacked the donuts on a platter and topped the donut cake with these cute chevron birthday candles I found.

The donut cake turned out really cute, and was a fun way to celebrate. This is definitely something I will be making again, I would love to try this recipe with all of the different cake flavors too. :)

In other news, early signs of spring are all around. We have had the weirdest winter so far, fairly warm, and not too wintery at all. Still no snow this year, but we often will have late February snow days around here, so who knows we may still get a bit of snow. We had the most surprising thunder and lightening storm last night as well! The first of the bulbs have started to blossom, the little narcissus and mini iris have bloomed this week. I even had quite the shock last week when I had to kill a giant yellow jacket that had decided to wake up for spring and surprise me in the living room, not the nicest of spring surprises! I felt it was way to early to start having to deal with yellow jackets! My most favorite sign of spring are my busy backyard birds and especially with the return of this pretty thrush. He has been hopping around my yard for a couple of weeks now, he seems to really enjoy my globe spruce and is often hopping around underneath. Last week I finally was able to snap a few pictures of him. I also heard him singing very beautifully in the trees along the little waterway behind my house, I zoomed in with the camera and sure enough it was our thrush, and from far away I heard another bird answer him after each of his calls. It was really neat to hear. :)

I am looking forward to Valentine's Day this coming Saturday. I still have some fun projects in mind that I hope to do this week. In the meantime I have set out some of my valentine decorations, as well as some new goodies I have found. I found this super cute fox candy dish for only $2.00 on clearance at Walmart, he is quirky and cute and I really love that I found it. I also picked up some cute little wooden and felt signs, and faux chalkboard signs from Target's dollar bins that I think updated my Valentine decor nicely. I think the signs look cute with the Valentine gnomes I needle felted a few years back.

I am also happy with this geometric brass sculpture I found at CB2.com it looks nice with my other wood decor. I also found some fun new Washi tape for my collection, perfect for Valentine's Day crafting projects!

Thanks for stopping by, have a wonderful week ! :)

Linking to :
Show and Share
Clever Chicks Blog Hop
Amaze Me Monday
Monday FunDay