Milo is two.

Milo turned two on Friday.  We went to the Como Zoo.  Here he is watching the polar bear:

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Milo loves birds, so I made him a bird cake.  No sculpture for me; I work mainly in buttercream.

I made a standard yellow layer cake recipe, with plenty of egg yolks and no egg white.  Halving the recipe yielded enough batter for a single eight-inch-square layer.  (My family of four doesn’t need a bigger one.)

For the first time, I tried using 100% whole wheat pastry flour. We liked it!  It had a firmer, more substantial crumb than a white-flour cake, and a nuttier flavor, almost like corn bread.  It took the chocolate buttercream icing beautifully.  I reserved some icing before adding the chocolate and piped it onto the cake in the shape of a bird (species uncertain, but it looks gooseish to me).  Then I added yellow food coloring to the bag and gave it a beak and feet. 

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   Milo liked the cake.

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