Happy Hanukkah! Er, Kwanzaa? Hmm...

Happy birthday Grandpa~

Birthdays are a special time for everyone. And when it comes to celebrating, nothing beats a delicious home-made sugar bomb, right?

Well, unluckily for me, my grandpops is diabetic - which makes baking delicious treats a bit more troublesome. And by that, I mean nigh on impossible.

There's two things my grandpa really likes - our dog Harold, and sweets. He's always had an awful sweet-tooth, so the diagnosis of diabetes was understandably distressing for him.

He's so cute. Who could resist that face? Looks like he has no legs though... awkward.

Bam! Wham! Stencil'd.

I painted a quick copy of Harold's face in Photoshop, printed it out and traced it out with a craft knife. This took an obscenely long amount of time but was totally worth it. If you're going to do this, I'd strongly recommend using card or something a bit stiffer if you want to use it more than once.

I whipped up a quick chocolate cake using Stevia instead of sugar, and as little oil and butter as possible. I was going for healthy here.

 

 

I recently managed to acquire a springform cake tin; I've been after one for ages! They are absolutely wondrous. I failed miserably using the baking parchment though, and opted for greasing with butter.

I baked this with the intention of cutting it in half. However, the tin was much bigger than I expected...

So I baked a new one! Which was too flat, because I ran out of flour :( Baking problems are the worst type of problems.

I spread one half with soft cream cheese, and the other with low sugar strawberry jam.

Squish! I panicked here because it looks ridiculously out of proportion, then remembered it's my family and they won't really care as long as it tastes good. Phew.

I may have gotten excited and forgotten to take progress pictures. :(

I layered the stencil over the cake, and then dusted caster sugar (because I forgot to buy icing sugar) over the top. I accidentally a huge amount in one spot though, so I grabbed a paintbrush and cleaned up the lines a bit.

I made some icing with cream cheese and cocoa powder mixed, and used that to stick the strawberry halves onto the cake. Healthy and delicious! Well, as healthy as cake can be, anyway.

A happy customer! ♥

Everyone loved the cake, and grandpa was super excited. He was so excited, he didn't actually notice that his dogs face on the front of it...