Today is Toby’s First Communion, and so we thought we’d share the fun we had preparing for the big day with our Easy Hand-Drawn Gift Wrap and our Marbled Oreo First Communion Cake.

Easy Hand-Drawn Gift Wrap
First off, here’s a little photo gallery of the wrapping I did for some of his gifts!  Toby loves turtles, and so the theme of course, was turtles and turtle-doves.  This is our favourite method of wrapping: brown shipping paper and sharpies or markers. I googled “galapagos turtle” and found a few images I liked, using them as models for my free-hand drawing. Then, I did a bible word search for “turtle” and found a nice reference to turtle doves in the Song of Solomon that I thought was most appropriate for the gift of a bible sent from our family out in California. Et voila: turtle wrapping of all kinds!

Marbled Oreo First Communion Cake

Ingredients
1/2 recipe of your best chocolate cake batter  [in a pinch? use a box mix and amp it up with vanilla or a shot of alcohol!]
1/2 recipe of your best white cake batter [in a pinch? use a box mix]
1 recipe of your best buttercream frosting [in a pinch? use pre-prepared icing!]
Gel Colour or Food Colouring of your choice [We used Wilton Kelly Green Gel Food Colour]
7 chocolate covered oreo-style cookie or plain oreo-style cookies
[We bought ours from the fabulous Ed's Real Scoop ice cream shop here in Toronto - Yes! They do fab chocolates, too!]
1 package of oreo-style cookies, smashed into bits with a meat cleaver or rolling pin [We used PC "Eat the Middle First" Cookies]
Wilton Cross-Cake Pan [We found ours at Bulk Barn - and we share it with other families at the kids' school]

Method
Heat the oven to 350.
Spray the Cross-Cake Pan with baking spray or grease and flour it as you see fit.
Prepare each batter in a separate bowl.
Pour small clumps of each batter into the cross cake pan.
Use a spoon, fork, skewer or coffee-stirrer stick to swirl the batter in the pan.
Bake the cake for 40-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
[Okay, it's a little weird "testing" a cross cake with a knife or pick!]
Cool completely.
Make Frosting.
Colour Frosting with gel or food colouring of your choice.
Invert Cake onto a large serving dish.
Frost Cake.
Decorate top of cake with chocolate covered oreos.
Using your hand, press smashed oreo bits onto the sides of the cake.
Enjoy!

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