Excellence in Families

I have often said how much I love my job. This cake is just another reason why. Robeson County Cooperative Extension delivers a program to families with youth between the ages of 10 and 14 called Strengthening Families. Families meet at the Cooperative Extension office one night a week for six weeks in a row. During that time they have the opportunity to have dinner together, then parents work in a group on discipline, communication and gaining a better understanding of their children. The children work on understanding their parents and gaining respect for them, communication and receive tools on how to handle tough topics like peer pressure, drugs, and sex. To date the program has been held three times with more than 10 families taking part in the program. About a month after the sixth session the group comes back together to meet, go over topics, talk about what works, and finally graduate from the program. Now needless to say, I always volunteer a cake but this time I did not know what to make. Finally the night before it came to me, make the kale like the certificate they would receive that night. Since we make the certificates it was nothing for me to save the certificate as a photo and print it out on edible paper. The cake was a butter cake and when I baked it it was much thinner than I expected so I cut it in half and made it a two layer cake. I already had an inkling that my audience liked icing so I was sure an extra layer of icing would not hurt any one's feelings. I printed the image on edible paper and then cut it down to fit the cake. It took less than a second to choose red for the border to highlight the red in the image. My other issue was that I could not find my traditional cardboard base to put the cake on. It so happened that the cake was the perfect size for my grandmothers cake plate/stand that I have yet to find a place for so it has been sitting on my dinning room table. Voila not only did we have a neat looking cake for a wonderful graduation for our families but I was able to kick it up a notch when I presented it. Which is exactly what tout families deserve. Congratulations to all of them on their graduation.