Some Catchin Up to Do

I've been baking, but not posting about it. The last couple of months have been crazy. But I've got a few cakes to show you. Let's start with this one:

My friend's mother-in-law was celebrating a birthday and a fire themed cake was requested. Here is how the conversation went:
Friend-"Can you put a fire extinguisher on top?"
Me- "¡¿WHAT IF I MAKE THE CAKE ITSELF INTO A FIRE EXTINGUISHER?!"
Yes, honestly, that's probably exactly what it sounded like. I get over excited sometimes.

I thought about doing a jelly roll to get the cylindar shape like I'd done before. But I wasn't super happy with how that worked out. So carving it was going to be. The request was for chocolate cake and fluffy chocolate frosting, so no ganache :(. I was doing a couple of cakes this weekend so I mixed up a double batch of my favorite chocolate cake recipe and threw a bunch of cocoa poweder into a simple american buttercream. Wasn't super happy with the buttercream, but I find that is the issue with me and ABC quite a bit here lately. I've been spoiled on ganache and SMBC I suppose.

You know I don't take many action shots while baking and decorating, but I couldn't pass up this shot of perfectly creamed butter and sugar. It's a thing of beauty, almost spiritual I tell you. Colors look weird, one shot with the flash, one without.

Eventually, this is what came out of the kitchen (Notice that I used the Taylor Swift contact paper again to cover the boards. Love that stuff. Need more designs though.):

Covering up the bad fondant edges. Sneaky, aren't I?

We had talked about making it actually spray, like whipped cream or something, but alas it did not.

But how cute is that caution tape? Love my food color markers.

Handle and gauge, I saw the meter in a couple of pictures I'd found online and loved it, so it had to be added.