Let her eat cake (and sniff garden flowers)

If your mother loves flowers, treat her to a Mother's Day bouquet she will simply eat up.

This easy, picturesque gift features an angel-food cake decorated with flowers from your garden or a nearby market. It serves double duty as a brunch or lunch centerpiece and as dessert.

Preparation

Bake an angel-food cake from scratch or a cake mix, or purchase one from the grocery store or bakery. An angel-food cake usually has a hole in the middle.

Then pick just about any type of flowers from your own garden or deck containers, or purchase a few from the market.

Arrangement

To arrange the cake bouquet, place a small container into the cake hole (a plastic or glass jar or a paper cup — anything that holds water). Build small nosegays of garden flowers such as pansies, grape hyacinths, camellias, tea roses, baby carnations or violets. Make two or three small bunches, and secure each bunch with a rubber band, string or florist tape. Cut the ends evenly, and place them in the container. Just the heads of the flowers should show on the cake.

Place the cake on a platter or dinner plate. You can also scatter a few small flowers around the rim of the plate or on the table.

Tip

Be sure the flowers have not been sprayed with any chemicals, as they will be coming into contact with the cake your guests will be eating.

If you don't make your own cake, you can buy unfrosted cakes at most supermarkets for about $5. Bakeries may charge a bit more. Our cake is from the Madison Park Bakery, which offers a small cake for $9.49 and a larger cake for $11.49. The pansies were free from my garden.

Budget Bouquets is an occasional feature in digs.