Tee-Tee Cakes

Due to a unique birthing schedule in our family Christmas day is followed by three straight days of birthdays. To compound the insanity of celebrating four days in a row (five if you include Christmas eve) we have rather elaborate birthday rituals. We are at least four generations into this on my wife's side so there's nothing I can really do about it at this point. The birthday person gets such benefits as choosing the menu for the day (all meals), the type and size of cake, and other family recreation for the day. The house gets decorated with ribbons and signs and balloons designating the chair of the birthday person. We also create elaborate multi step scavenger hunts with rhyming clues leading to presents for those that wish to have a challenge on their special day. Honestly, there is so much to write about, that I need to break this post up into several posts that will explain bits and pieces of it as further birthdays happen.
To start things off, I'll explain the concept of tee-tee cakes. We always have two cakes at birthdays, one for the family, and one for the birthday person. The family cake can be as large and elaborate as the Great Wall of China (a project involving three 13x9 cakes extending over 4 feet long) to something as simple as a round double layer cake frosted and decorated as directed. The personal cake is always made in a round 5 inch pan and frosted as directed. These small cakes were christened tee-tee cakes some years ago by a toddler and have more or less held onto that designation. As a parent they are a spectacular way to get those all important pictures of a baby eating cake. As a kid, well, you get your own cake, how awesome is that?