Two Cakes, Two Parties, Two Different Cities, Same Afternoon.

Quite a while ago a friend asked me to do a baby shower cake for her daughter at the end of March.  A couple of weeks later I had a request to do a Birthday Cake also for the end of March. Then a week after that I realized that the end of March meant the same day (Today) for both cakes, in two different cities. Luckily for me the lady that ordered the latter cake was willing to drive to the location of the baby shower to pick it up. Now I just needed to get all the cakes, my gift and the kids in the car and to that location in one piece. I found great boxes for all of my cakes this time. I packed the cakes in the boxes and then packed the boxes all up in the car. (Ahead of schedule I might add) Nice and safe! Everything had a place and as long as nothing slid as I made the 30 minute car ride to our destination I would be in good shape. For extra insurance I grabbed as many bath towels as I could find and tucked them in between the boxes.

Next, kids. They are never quite as easy to pack in the car neatly! One needs a blanket to keep warm the other has to take off his shoes because he is too hot. (Honestly, too hot!? The thermometre in the car says the outside temperature is -3 today), there needs to be drinks and snacks within reach but not on thier laps so they can spill everywhere. My seat has to be just far enough forward to be out of reach that I don't get kicked in the back during the entire trip but close enough to the back that if something drops I can very skillfully reach to the back seat pick it up hand it to the oldest one to hand back to the one that dropped it and is now screaming in my ear for it.

Everyone is now in the car, I start the car and realize I haven't opened the garage door yet. (I wonder sometimes if there is a subliminal message in that). I quickly open the garage door, take a deep breath (then think that wasn't smart) and put the car in gear. I back out and the backup alarm goes off. I stop. Get out of the car, I remove the tricycle from the middle of the driveway that no one knows how it got there. I get back in the car, another deep breath and off we go. 30 minutes later we arrive at the destination,  it has been a pretty quiet ride and except for being told to Please!Stop Singing! there has not been any incident. A Miracle really.

The cake has been delivered to the first party and the lady that is to meet me has arrived, we have made the exchange and her cake is now on it's second journey to it's final destination. (Not my worry anymore!)

All in All, so far is has been a good day.

Now I will make my kids stay for a portion of the baby shower and when they can take it no more, I will sneak out the back door of the shower and take them to Cheeky Monkey's (an indoor playland)  to play out the rest of the afternoon.

I do tease about them being naughty but in the end they are very good when I have things to do and drag them all over the countryside with me.

This is the birthday cake, it was an "Over the Hill" party, everything I looked at online while researching ideas all seemed a little creepy or tacky. The lady the party was for is far too lovely for that so I thought I would make a hill, with a boulder on top of it and tie a rope to it. Then I put a knot at the other end and draped it over the edge of the hill. I liked the way it turned out.

This next one is the baby shower cake. I didn't research this one online at all. I woke up in the middle of the night with this one on my mind. I dreamed it would look exactly like this. Everything was edible except the cradle. I think the cradle would be awesome in chocolate. I need to think on that design a little longer.

Anyways, this was the end result this time. And I would like to note that "Dreams Do Come True"

 (Sorry, I spent a lot of days at Disney World, not that long ago.)

Buttercream......my eye!!

As I mentioned in my first post, I took a Cake Decorating Class at the local craft store. Mostly because it was winter and I live in the country with only one neighbour across the road from us. And I live in Canada, so winter can be very cold, very long and in my casea very lonely experience. Did I mention I have two small children also, 5 and 3. Back then they were only 3 and one. I really needed something else to do and think about until spring came and we could go outside again.

Okay, so onto my Cake Decorating Course.

The first class consisted of how to properly bake a cake, grease the pan, and level the cake. Levelling a cake is essentially cutting the top off of the cake to make it perfectly flat. Not difficult if you have a good eye, but I wear bifocals!! The task of levelling a cake for me falls right into that section of my glasses where I am looking up and looking down to try to find the perfect angle of my lenses to look through.

 It never worked out. My cakes were crooked every time. I have since fixed the problem. Now I fill the cake pan a little too full. The cake always bakes higher than the edge of the pan. Then I take my favourite serated knife and lay it on the lip of the cake pan. The knife is long enough that it spans to the other side. I carefully drag the knife along the edge and voila, I have a very level cake. I then tip the cake out of the pan and there you have it...perfection! Unless of course, I haven't greased and floured the pan properly and then I have a very level jigsaw puzzle. That has happened on more occasions than I am presently willing to admit.

The second class was a demonstration on how to properly put filling in a double layer cake and how to crumb coat or dirty ice a cake. Pretty simple.

The third class showed us how to fill a piping bag, hold the bag, change the tips and practice making different little patterns and borders with the piping bag.

The final class we would bring all of our newly developed skills together. As homework we would make a cake, level it, fill it and crumb coat it. We brought that to our final class along with all of the supplies we would need to ice it with decorative icing.
Our teacher gave us the Buttercream Icing recipe to make the icing ourselves and she gave us additional instructions how to get the icing to the right consistancy so that it would pipe easily. I started to worry, there was not any butter, in this "buttercream" recipe. Oh well, I pressed on. We could colour the icing any colour we wanted or make multiple colours if we would like and bring all of our little containers of icing to class.

Before I show you my final project I should explain. I can never just do anything the way I am told to do it.

My daughter really wanted a fairy cake. Well, I didn't learn that in class. How would I incorporate what I had learned into a fairy cake?  Here's what happened. I made a round cake, I levelled it (almost) this cake was crooked!! But I used the angle to my advantage. I filled it and then crumb coated it. Just like I was supposed to. Then I took the picture of the fairy that my daughter liked and I traced it with a stylus into the crumb coat of icing. When I got to class I piped along all of the impression lines that I had made at home. Finally I started to fill all of the sections with icing stars in the colour I had predetermined at home. One more thing before you see the project. Have you ever done something, really up close and think everything is looking good and then you step back and it looks completely different or maybe out of proportion?

Well, when I got home I put the cake on the table. I was very proud of my newly aquired skill. For the first time I stepped back a looked at the finished product. Uh oh!  She wasn't quite right.  My confidence wained a little as I showed it to my husband. This was his reaction:

.

WOW, it's a little trampy!! Why would you choose to do that?

He completely missed her wings or that she was one of the fairies in Emma's favourite book and favourite puzzle and favourite movie. But it gets worse, I showed Emma. She hated it. That fairy should have a red dress and orangy wings and the flowers should be roses because of her name and on and on and on. Well to save myself from any more criticism I decided that we would just quit looking at it and eat it instead. I took one bite and to my horror, I had made the very icing that I had detested all my life. My first creation was a disaster and it was all I could do to repress the gagging sensation from that terrible icing I remebered from my childhood. My family was in complete agreement and the cake found a new home in the compost pile.

Here is the best part. Our only neighbor I told you about earlier has two dogs, they found the cake in the compost pile, ate it, and had the runs for two days.

So this is my point, no one should eat that awful shortening based icing. It is nasty!!

 I also believe that if a recipe has the word Butter in the name of it then the recipe should have some Butter in it!!

Sam's Birthday Cake

This was my Brother in Law's 40th Birthday Cake. It is another one of my favourites. It was so fun to do. All of the shells were made by hand, I had a jar of shells that my Mother in Law had collected on her favourite florida beach. I shaped and painted each one in tones that matched the real shells. The Corona bottles are made out of rice crispie square mixture and pressed into forms that my brilliant husband made for me. The ice cubes are also fondant covered rice crispie squares. Sand....you guessed it, brown sugar. And my favourite part of all, the tiny fondant star fish. My daughter loved those too. The thing about using Rice Crispie squares in a cake design is trying to keep them for the cake design. Everyone in my house kept stealing them!

Bieber Fever

My friends daughter, Addison, turned 5 this month and she LOVES Justin Bieber. Her mom shopped around and could not find a cake that fit the bill. She called me and I immediately said sure. One problem, I knew the name, I knew his music from the radio, I had no clue what he looked like, but I was committed. The birthday was only 3 days away. I hit the internet and researched everything I could about Justin Bieber, I needed photos mostly but found, videos, blogs about him, his interests, his love life, his even favourite colour, which also happened to be Addison's favourite colour. Lucky for me I had lots of Purple. I listened to songs, I watched videos and then stumbled upon the fact that his girlfriend is Selena Gomez, which the entire world is aware of except me. Well my 5 year old daughter's favourite singer is Selena Gomez, so then she decided to help me do research and eventually steered everything we were looking for closer and closer to her end goal of  watching Selena Gomez videos. Oh well, I now had what I needed and I set myself to recreating Justin Bieber in Fondant!! Here's what happened...

Getting the hair just right was tricky but the hardest part was keeping his legs from shrinking under the weight of his torso and head. I ended up taking him apart and drying him in two sections. His hair took some work and I wanted to get it right because it really is one of his signature features.........or should I say WAS!!! He cut his hair the day before the party! Oh well! Hopefully the 5 year olds were not that up on the news.

Here's what else happened.... now my household has Bieber Fever. Emma wants to watch every you tube video she can find of him.

Sorry the Pic is so small.  I am going to have to find another one and rescale it. I will replace it.

Snowflake