Oh My, has it really been 18 months?

I guess it has!  I'm not even sure what I've been doing in all of that time, way too many sleeps ago.  Although it was a little stressful around June 2012.... I turned 40 and unbeknownst to me, my fabulous husband had organized a surprise party for me.  Now, the surprise was not only that I didn't know that it was happening, but that it was happening in my own house.  OMG the shame of having my friends come over and vacuum my house and change beds, as we had house guests too - all whilst I was out with my daughters being pampered at the nail salon.  I haven't received any anonymous magazine cutout letter blackmail notes so either the house wasn't that bad, or they're too traumatized and are still suffering from PTSD.....

The surprise was beyond anything I could have imagined, I still tear up now, must be soppy now that I'm older!  We got home and were barred access to the house from the garage.  Then I was allowed in and told to go to the basement, where I was met with 40-50 people shouting surprise.  The biggest one being my best American friend Marge.  She and her husband emigrated to the UK in Feb 2012 and there they were standing behind the bar in my basement.  Well of course I cried, and then she handed me an envelope that said, "go to Jessica's room".  I went off up stairs full of excitement, as I opened the door there stood my very best friends from the Uk and their gorgeous daughters.  After lots of hugs and snot bubbles (that'd be me), they then handed me another envelope that said "go to the end bedroom".  I could not begin to imagine who'd or what'd be there in that room.  I walked nervously along the hallway and tried to open the door and was met with it being held shut from the other side.  After a knock at the door and telling whoever was behind it that I had the envelope and I was told to come to the door, it opened and there stood my mum and dad - well if I blew snot bubbles before they were nothing on this time, except being parents they hugged me back (instead of waiting until I'd cleaned my face "Neil").

Anyhoo, all of that took me by such surprise that I was completely taken aback and in a bit of a daze for weeks, okay it was August before I tried to function again.  The summer all just went so quickly that I took some photos of cakes that I'd done, but didn't do anything more with them.  I also got super busy as the school year started as I was solo president of the girls' PTA (much to my husband's chagrin), so that took up a lot of time and although I was still doing cakes here and there for friends, I didn't always take photos of them.

But, never say never.... I'm back again, not sure for how long this time, lots of irons in the fire but I've got quite a few pics to load onto the slideshow and maybe the odd post here and there again.

Scooby, Scooby Doo, where are you?

 

What a week!  My gorgeous little Jessica, aka Jedi, turned 8 on Friday - my dad, aka Grampsie also had his birthday on Friday, if I tell you that he was 60 the day that Jessica was born then you'll be able to work out his age without me having told you ha ha.



Mystery Machine à la Jessica!



I was surprised when back in December Jessica said that she wanted a Scooby Doo cake and birthday party, well not least because it was 4 months away but also because she's a fairly girly girl.  She never waivered from the Scooby Doo theme all the way along and it became very apparent that I was going to have to make the Mystery Machine - in a cake and 3D - Zoinks!

She also slipped into the cake equation that she wanted a vanilla pudding filling except in strawberry flavor!  No mean feat as Jello doesn't make a strawberry flavor pudding, or at least my local Publix doesn't carry it.  With necessity being the mother of invention, I doctored a vanilla pudding box - there's not a lot that heavy cream (double cream to my UKian followers) and a couple of drops of strawberry extract can't do to make something taste yummy ;-).  So, vanilla cake with strawberry filling done - just the small matter of making it resemble the Mystery Machine......



Shaggy?



Being the type of worker I am, I set about filling and carving the cake on Friday afternoon, yes, the same Friday of her birthday.  I'd already told her that the cake would be ready for her party on the Saturday and she was okay with that, not least because I made 2 dozen Scooby Doo cupcakes for her to take to school for a class lunchtime treat.





Anyway, back to the van.... I don't mind telling you all, I had a hell of a time with the fondant on Friday afternoon.  The reason of course was the weather - hot and humid are not friends of fondant.  It makes for a real sticky, soft mess to try and work with and mold.  It did actually tear once I got it on the cake and not too long ago I'd have ripped the lot off and started again but when you're against the clock and just want it finished you quickly learn that a well placed flower can hide quite a lot of things :-) 

I baked a 1/4 sheet cake - that's a 9 x 13 inch cake to most of us.  I cut it in half, so that I ended up with 2 x 6.5" by 9" cakes - it looked a little small at the time but I'm glad I didn't go any bigger.  With the cake filled and dirty iced and resting in the fridge out of the sticky Southern weather I set about coloring the fondant.  I just couldn't put it off any longer and it was time to get down to turning the cake into a van, and not just any van but possibly the most famous TV van (after the A-Team that is) in the world.

I'd printed out The Mystery Machine logo and sat for over half an hour painstakingly I mean lovingly cutting out each and every tiny letter with my exacto knife so that I could then lay the paper over the green fondant and cut out the spaces to then lay that over the orange fondant.  Well, suffice it to say it didn't work out!  I did mention the humid weather right?  Well the paper stuck to the green fondant and made a huge mess, I can't remember what I said exactly, but it was along the lines of 'Oh shucks, now I need to come up with another plan'!!!!!

I left that part and moved onto making the wheels, bumpers and headlights - instead of using vodka to mix with the lustre dust to get the chrome effect I drank the vodka and used lemon extract.  Plain water doesn't work as it makes the fondant sticky - same thing as the humidity but I'll stop going on about that.

With a few flowers and number 8's scattered around, it came out okay.  I didn't love the windows and wished I'd taken more time over cutting them and recessing them but truth be told, I was ready to throw the whole thing in the bin at this point and buy a sheet cake from Publix!  Jessica loved it though and that's what mattered.  A few parents who dropped off their daughter the following day all commented on it too, in a very positive way - or they did to my face at least....

Top view

Dodgy front view with foam support on full display

Don't look too closely at the bottom that's where the fondant puckered!



Boom boom aka lacka lacka boom

Are you all singing yet?  I've had this song in my head since early this morning (It's Was Not Was - Everybody Walk the Dinosaur), well after I got rid of the "Maggie and the Ferocious Beast" theme tune that is!

Life has been pretty busy of late - I've been baking almost weekly but I've just not had the time to post on here, or rather when I have had the time I've been snoring my head off on the couch instead.... like the song reference above, it's an age thing!

So, why dinosaurs on the brain? I made a dinosaur cake for my handsome little neighbor who is turning 6 and after much discussion and worry he settled on a green dinosaur cake - oh to be six again and having the only stress in your life being what cake you should choose.....

He asked for a chocolate flavored green dinosaur and that's what he got! 

I was humming and ha-ing (that is a word!) as to the best way to go about this one as it didn't need to be huge - just enough to feed 14 hungry boys who'd been bouncing all afternoon - perhaps I should have gone huge?? 

Eventually I settled on the Wilton Sports pan and me being me had enough cake batter to also bake a 3 inch high, 8 inch round chocolate cake ;-) 

I carved one of the ball halves to make his head, I think it's a boy, and the other half I sliced vertically and filled with the chocolatiest chocolate buttercream which elongated him into the perfect shape that I wanted.  Of course I acted like I knew this would happen. 

With him dirty iced in more of the CCBC (chocolatiest chocolate buttercream) he slept in the fridge overnight all nice and safe whilst I partied for St. Patrick's Day - I know any excuse right?

This morning I colored the fondant and covered him and cut out lots and lots of triangles and circles for his body armour, and made his tail and legs.  FYI - they don't have to be anatomically correct when you're going to eat them.

 I wasn't going to do much for his mouth, truth be told I'm not the best at doing mouths but I couldn't resist adding a cheeky tongue :-p

For the record, I hate these cake boards!

It's been a while...

since I last posted and I've completely blown my New Year's Resolution to post at least once every month - oh well, only another 2 weeks til I get to start it all over again ha ha.

Lots of little distractions have been going on that have meant I've not been doing much in the way of baking or at least not a huge amount.

This week though I did make a horse head cake.  Nothing as macabre as The Godfather horse head - of course this is what's been in my mind all week whenever I thought about doing it, but as it was a for an eight year old girl I'm sure it's not quite what they were after!

I originally thought I'd do a full 3D horse and set about baking 4 1/2 sheet cakes of red velvet but as the end cake was to feed 20 people and not 200 I decided to scale it down a bit - okay real reason is I panicked that I wouldn't get the proportions right!  I started trying to draw a horse sitting down, on Thursday night, (cake due for pick up on Friday), I am the proverbial lastminute.com worker - well the advantage to that is extremely fresh cake :-)  Anyway, I fast realized that I can't draw a horse, insert lots of expletives here any ones you like as I'm sure I used them all and I also made up a few new ones too.  So, with the reassuring voice of reason of my husband - what he actually said, "was that looks sh*t, why don't you just do the head?", I decided that I'd do a horse head and made a template and went from there.

Friday morning all was quiet, except for me munching on some Dove peppermint bark squares well a girl needs to keep her strength up, and my iPod blaring to keep me company, and I set to work on carving the sheet cakes into a horses head.  The photo's will follow - no I didn't take any as I was carving as I'd probably have either cut my fingers off (yes I did use the biggest bread knife I have in the style of Buddy from Carlos Bakery and no my delusion knows no bounds!) or got the lens covered in red velvet and cream cheese frosting crumbs.  Alright, real reason is that I made one huge unholy mess whilst carving.  There was cake everywhere and I do mean everywhere, there's no way I could have recorded that evidence.

I got the cake done in 3 hours, well all up until the bridle and then I had to head off and do some mummy duties at the 4th grade winter party at school and then come home and finish the cake before the swim team chauffeuring began - just one of the reasons I've not been caking recently. 

By some small miracle, I got the bridle rolled and cut and attached and removed, scrapped and redone all before it was time to hit the pool and I was quietly pleased with it I don't mind telling you.  It's not often I feel that way, I usually feel like I'm going to throw up before cakes are delivered or picked up but not this time, maybe it was just the exhaustion taking over.

The cake was picked up and they loved it.  And I had just enough time to descale the kitchen of red velvet cake before the girls' friend arrived for a sleepover - it's all go in the burbs!

A close up without his ears - they wouldn't fit in the box!

Not so close up and with the ears, although I think I like him without them and it's okay to say that because he can't hear me ha ha ha!

Christmas cakes coming up, watch this space....

It's a Jungle Out There!

And all of a sudden it's been months since I posted anything....  Hmmm, my New Year's Resolution was good for 4 months, maybe I can redeem myself for the last half of the year?

I made this cake back in April for a neighbor's friend's baby shower - are you keeping up with this?  The cake is carrot cake, filled with real cream cheese frosting, real as in not Neufchatel or fat free but real, honest to goodness you can't count the calories REAL cream cheese.  Well, when you're adding 2lbs of powdered sugar to the cream cheese a little thing like full fat really pales into insignificance!

The design for this cake came from the invitations for the shower - I was going to make a palm tree to go on top too, but well, I forgot - how bad is that?  However, I think it would have been too crowded to add a tree too, don't you?  I knew you'd agree.

For any eagle-eyes out there, the giraffe's legs are in the cake, they really are....

As my 7yr old learned when I was baking this cake, carrot cake has real carrots in it!  Which means it's healthy and does count as one of your 5 per day ;-)

The animals are all edible, (even the ears on the giraffe which are spaghetti noodles), they're a mix of gumpaste and fondant.  Everything else is fondant too.  If you can't eat it, I don't use it!

The initial request was for the finish to be cream cheese, which it started off as, but I just didn't like the shade of blue, so I covered it in fondant as I could never have let it leave my kitchen the way it was, told you right at the beginning I was a little OCD when it came to cakes!

♫ Here comes the bride....♫

or rather, the wedding cake....

Of course, way back last year when Marge asked if I'd make her wedding cake, I truly didn't think that I ever would actually do it!  I told her I'd love to make it and that wasn't a lie, I was more worried about COULD I make it!  I mean, cakes for birthdays are special, but if it's not exactly what you wanted it to be (not that anyone has complained or told me this, at least not to my face), you usually have another go at getting it right the following year.  Not so much with a wedding cake, it's pretty much a one shot deal, unless of course your name is Kody Brown who currently has 4 wives and therefore 4 weddings, but that's a whole other conversation.....

I had planned many a sit down with Marge and her Stu, Stu BB as he's known in this household but for one reason or another we didn't really get to do that.  So, whilst they were here for another event (one which shall remain nameless as my team got beaten!) I prepared some cake and various fillings for them to try and low and behold 4 weeks before the wedding we had a cake flavor and fillings for each of the tiers, phew! 

We'd talked about some designs and colors etc in the passing but nothing really that formal, nor concrete. 2 weeks before the wedding I managed to tie the bride (aka Marge but I won't be able to call her the bride forever, will I?) down to color and final'ish design for her cake.

All systems go... well after the PTA Spring Carnival that I was heavily involved in both the planning and execution (and believe me I did think there was going to be an execution as the night drew to a close...) which happened to be wedding minus 1 week.  Now, this was a hectic time and tbh I think it's best that it was like that as I didn't have time to dwell and worry about the best way to do the cake until the day before the wedding.  Actually, that's a little fib.. I did bake one of the layers on the Thursday morning, but then had to clear up and head off to the bachelorette party (hen do) which started at lunch time, wonder who organised that so early in the day.... ahem.... Anyway from there to a PTA meeting in the evening and home to fill the tier that I'd baked earlier. 

You'd think with all of that activity I'd be fast asleep until the Jessica alarm came bounding in, but alas no.  3am - bing wide awake so I got up and started in on making the gumpaste flowers and some other decoration bits that needed time to dry.  It was actually quite theraputic in the wee hours of the morning not quite so much come 7am when the rest of the house wakened.  The girls were excited as they were heading off for Spring Break to Myrtle Beach, so I cleared away again (for that read I shoved everything to one end of the table and put the rest on the dining table out of the way) and spent some time with my babies before they headed off for the week.

Friday I got the other layers baked, filled and covered with fondant ready for the decoration.  Thankfully it was an evening wedding and the earliest I was allowed to deliver the cake was 4.30pm so I had lots of time on Saturday too to finish up.  Unfortunately not enough time to fully clear away the horrendous mess I'd made in the kitchen, dining room and breakfast table before showering and getting ready for the wedding and cake delivery.  Funnily enough it was all still sitting there waiting for me when I got home too :-(

We got the cake delivered to the venue and they were still setting up which meant we had to wait for almost 10 minutes which consequently put Stu in a cold panic that he may not have time to get to the English Pub before the ceremony started (but we did).  Got it all in place, in it's beautiful setting at the front of the dining room and off we set.  I was really nervous until I met the florist on the way out and he said 'awesome cake'. I'm thinking he's seen quite a few cakes in his time and this settled my nerves almost as much as that icy cold pint of Stella :-)

Okay, are you ready for some pics? In true style of my photography, the pictures are pretty dire, but I think you can still see the cake okay, you can, can't you?

From the front

From the top

All 3 tiers are vanilla cake.  The top and middle tier are filled with white chocolate buttercream and the bottom tier is filled with whipped milk chocolate buttercream layered with dark chocolate ganache.



From the back....
Oh, and the back has some lego panels with the lego bricks tumbling out, naturally ;-)



It's not just the Queen of England that has 2 birthdays....

Jessica's official birthday is on Wednesday which is a pretty tough day to coordinate for a party, so we went for it this past Saturday.  She had her 7th party at Splatter Rocks which is a pottery, painting, tie-dye, mosaic place.  The venue was pretty cool the actual party kind of lacking but that's from the paying adult's perspective - always a harsh critic where dosh in involved!  From the girls' point of view, everyone seemed to enjoy it.  The majority painted a tile which will have holes drilled in and ribbon threaded through for them to hang where ever they want to, or rather wherever their parents say they can.... Other choices were a unicorn, flower, turtle or snake.

Anyway, less about the actual party and onto the cake.  Jessica is a fairly tough customer when it comes to cake.  Most children choose chocolate or vanilla cake - not the Jedi, she requested marble cake with a red velvet & vanilla cake combination (she originally wanted rv & white chocolate but changed her mind).  The cake turned out pretty well.  Any bakers out there will know that the consistency of red velvet cake batter is waaaaaay runnier than regular yellow cake batter, mostly as it has vegetable oil as the fat and not butter!  Still, I did it and although it looked a little pink in places, there were definite pockets of white and red so I'll take that as a success.  The design request was for a lego themed cake, but different to the lego cake I'd done before - okay then....

This was a pretty last minute cake in that I started decorating at 8.20pm on Friday night (cake due next morning).  There's been so much going on recently outside of baking - now I've mentioned this before, but I really do do other things besides baking and making an almighty mess in the kitchen - that I really only had Friday night to get on and do the cake.  Alright, throw in a healthy dose of procrastination and you get the picture...

So, with the girls in bed, I started.  The marshmallow fondant just wouldn't co-operate.  I don't know if it was the temperature outside (it was 84F here on Friday), or if I just didn't nuke the marshmallows for long enough, whatever the reason, I had it on and off the cake several times before wanting to throw it all out of the window.  I even contemplated throwing the whole lot out, cake and all and buying one on Saturday morning from Publix, such was my frustration!  However, I put my hormones back in check and got on with it, just as all self-respecting mums do.  I wasn't particularly happy with the end result of the green marshmallow fondant but well, sometimes you've just got to go with what you've got!  The bricks were fun to do, and yes, yet again, I cut them all out to the sizes of real lego bricks.  (I'm thinking of making a silicon mould for these little things (not exactly what I was calling them on Friday night but that was the sentiment), I mean, really how hard can that be?  I'm almost positive there will be a youtube video, if not several, on how to do it.)  A saving grace was that Jessica didn't want her cake to look like the previous lego cake, which meant way less dots to cut and apply individually which was a time saver.  As it was, I finished the cake at 1.30am and after a very rough tidy and clean of my work area I hit the hay. 

6.45am Saturday morning, my bedroom door flew open and there was Jessica asking if she could a) see her cake and b) was it time to get ready yet?  No was the answer to both. 
6.50am - Jessica again, wanting to go downstairs to see the cake - reply = yes, but don't touch it!  Squeals of delight and awesome rang through the house from my little Southern Belle (oh yes, she's an English born all American Gal!).

We got to the party with everything remembered, except for cutlery to eat the cake with, all that had RSVP'd arrived and a fun time was had by all.  Especially Jessica who was completely overwhelmed (and just a tad obnoxious - only I am allowed to say that!) with all of the wonderful gifts she received - thank you to all who came and helped celebrate Jessica turning 7.



Jessica's 7th Birthday Party cake



Of course, thoughts have now turned to what she's going to have for her 'real' birthday cake for her official birthday!