Antonia and I would like to extend our best birthday wishes to little Chaeli Jayne and her proud parents, Patty and Sean, by offering a glimpse of the cake created for her on the occasion of her birth one year ago.
(The theme of the cake was a celebration of the Jersey Shore, complete with paintings of four of the many lighthouses which dot the shore. The new baby arrives in a sugar sailboat festooned with a sugar sail bearing a painted scallop shell. A tern keeps her company on the bow of the boat while sugar pillows and blankets keep her compfy and toasty. Sugar shells, molded from real sea shells and starfish, interspersed with sugar roses, anchor the corners of the shimmering, sea-blue, fondant-covered cake. Each cake side features a painted sugar plaque of a Jersey Shore lighthouse. Photo number six is the yellow and black Absecon Lighthouse in Atlantic City. Since it is located in the midst of a group of apartment houses, I chose to paint it surrounded by the ever-present phragmites on our coastal shore. Photo number seven is the red and white Barnegat Lighthouse on Long Beach Island. Number eight is the top of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse while number nine is the Twin Lights or Navesink Lighthouse of Highlands.)
Maria
