Amanda Rettke - Surprise-Inside Cakes: Amazing Cakes for Every Occasion--with a Little Something Extra Inside

Im proud of being born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, the biggest small city I know. While most folks know Fargo from the Coen brothers movie, I know it as something entirely different. Kind. Exciting. Friendly. Inspiring. My family still lives there, and we visit as often as life allows. Nothing comforts me more than seeing my old hometown through the eyes of my children, seeing them excited by the things that used to delight me.

Up until the last few years I was purely a consumer of baked goods. I did not make my own cakes or cookies or delectable treats. I didnt even know how! But I did know that in Fargo, Catering by Concordia College has the most amazing banana bread, and Great Harvest Bread Company has the best giant oatmeal cookies, and Quality Bakery makes the best cake donut known to man.

When we moved from a bustling city to the smallest town in Minnesota (well, maybe its not the smallest, but the population is around 1,000), I didnt know what to do with myself. There was no coffee shop, bakery, or grocery store just around the corner. I couldnt continue to just buy what I wantedI had to start learning to make things for myself. I was pretty clueless, just getting by in the kitchen.

After I had my first baby in 2005, I started a blog called i am mommy. Three people read that blog, and one of them was my mother. Today that blog is one of my most sacred places to share and talk about the amazing little people in my life. At the end of the day, mommy is the best description of who I am.

But being a mommy means you must possess a certain amount of know-how. In 2009 I started baking to keep up with the constant flow of birthday parties, Christmas cookie swaps, and church potlucks. I started with cookieslots and lots of sugar cookies that I decorated with intricate designs and patterns. Having no formal training or experience in the kitchen meant that I needed to teach myself. I watched lots of Food Network and Martha Stewart. I let special occasions, my kids, and my dreams inspire me. My mommy blog was being overrun by baked goods, so I created another blog called i am baker. But I kept having babies (five in all!), and the amount of time I was able to dedicate to the intricate art of decorating sugar cookies became less and less. So instead of cookies I started to make cakes. This was pretty strange, because until that point Id never looked at a cookbook or food blog about cake. In fact I knew nothing about cakes except that we liked to eat them.

When I decided to put a surprise on the inside of my cake for the first time, it seemed like a normal thing to do, simply because I didnt know any better.

The first surprise-inside cake was the nervous that there would be a bunch of pumpkin cakes, so I wanted to try and make mine different. Then it hit me... why not put a candle made of cake inside? I pondered that cake for weeks and weeks. My end design was a far cry from the original plan of execution, but every single moment of labor and planning was worth it when I saw peoples faces. At that time (2009) there were no surprise-inside cakesno one had heard of such a thing. I had no idea what to even call it!

Fast-forward to today, and while I may have a little gift for unique baking ideas, Im not an expert by any means. Im in awe of all my amazingly talented food-blogging friends, and as an ever-evolving work in progress, I try to learn from the things they share. In the same spirit, Im happy to share with you here some of the cake designs that have been floating around my mind, and deeply grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to do so.

Cover photographs by Susan Powers

Author photograph by Rialee Photography