Dum, Dum, Da-Dum...

I had a very special cake request this weekend. My lovely friend Heather (who was a camp counselor at Girl Scout Camp with me!) got married!

The lovely couple:

Aren't they adorable? I stole this from Heather's Facebook page, hope she doesn't mind. :)

As they were planning the wedding months ago, she asked me to make the groom's cake. What an honor and a great responsibility to make something so special.

Her new husband likes cars, and Mustangs in particular. Which raises him up a few notches for me seeing as how a '64 1/2 convertible was my dream car for a while. :) I even test-drove a GT when buying a car, but I fell in love with my Honda. But Ryan has an Accord, and he's all good. So she asked me to make a chocolate cake with the Mustang symbol on it.

So this guy:

(Not my picture, got it from here.)

 And of course, I just couldn't leave well enough alone. That's what gets us in to trouble, right? So I was like "What if I make A CAR?!?!" all excited like. And of course she agreed, who wouldn't? Ryan's dream car is apparently Eleanor. Now I haven't seen Gone in 60 Seconds, nor will I probably ever, but I gotta say, this car is hot.

(Again, not my photo. Got it from here.)

But then at that point, I had to figure out a how I was going to make cake look like that. The first practice round didn't go well, but I was already committed to it. I have to admit, I lost a lot of sleep over this cake. Both in the planning and execution phases.

But the end result was pretty good, if I do say so myself. Without further ado:

I even managed to get you a photo from the process! Of course it was just one, but that's better than normal right? The cake started with two really big sheet cakes. They were somewhere around 25x19x~1.5 each. I cut each into two long strips and trimmed off the excess to get the cake slightly larger than my finished product. This is the cakes all stacked and ready to go:

I did a lot of planning, had lots of patterns, tried to study every slope change on the car, but it is really difficult to manage in cake. The cake itself is on a raised platform (which became even more raised about 11:00pm Friday night before the wedding when I figured out my tires wouldn't fit) of foam board cut to size.

Once the cake was shaped, it was covered in ganache, then accents were added in modeling chocolate. These included the panels behind the two doors, the ridges down the body, and the spoiler in back. The spoiler was a lot of fun actually. I was happy with it.
Here's a view of it from the side along with the cake's platform:

And I added a few fun details, like the vanity plate:

And the symbol they'd asked for initially (a last-minute addition Saturday morning). And I'd like to point out that it's all fondant:

Another view:

And I have to admit, it was pretty traumatizing evening for me at the reception. Have you ever been told that your dog or cat was sent to the farm to live and play, only to find out as an adult it died? I live in a world where I drop my cakes off, people oh and ahh about them (excuse the conceit) and then the cakes live long,
happy, safe lives. I don't watch the cakes I spent hours on being cut and eaten.

...But I did this time...

I watched some guy who had no idea what kind of love, sweat, and tears went into this cake CUT THE FRONT END OFF!

There is really no preparing yourself for it. None at all. I might have teared up a bit at this. But then again, people couldn't tell me how good it was unless they did...

Here's my Aunt Linda enjoying her piece:

Linda deserves a medal or something since I decorated at her house. For a woman who likes to clean, she was quite calm about the chocolate all over her dining room table and the pink countertops. Plus the extra trips for more supplies while I made an even bigger mess. And Uncle Jerry too, for trusting me to drive his big, beautiful, new truck all the way to Dallas. :) And of course my Mom for getting supplies and letting me use her awesome mixer at work to bake.

Congratulations Heather and Ryan! Thank you for letting me play such a special part of your special day. I wish you joy, luck, and happiness for you and your new adventure together.  

How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?

You'll have to fill in your own punchline. :)

But at least one budding lawyer is celebrating his graduation! Not much time to write, so enjoy the pictures.

How much booze can you fit into a cake?

I decided to find out with the help of Captain Morgan. :) The answer is: not enough to get a buzz. But it turned out yummy. A friend and coworker hosted a Mardi Gras party and I volunteered to bring a cake (duh). It gave me an excuse to bust out my cake sprinkles.

Going with the Mardi Gras theme, I decided the cake needed some serious booze. As luck would have it, one of my favorite bloggers posted a recipe for Pina Colada cake. I colored the cakes purple and green (to go with the color scheme). Once the cake was done, I brushed on coconut rum. As much as I could add without making the cake soggy. And I whipped up a batch of coconut buttercream, using coconut milk in place of the normal liquids and coconut extract in place of the normal vanillla. And rum, lots of rum. :)

Then of course lots of gratuitous purple, green, and gold/yellow decorations. And sprinkles. And I found a great excuse to pick up some gold dragees (yay!).

The mask is made of gumpaste and then handpainted.



Are You Ready for Some Football?!

Did you know that when they say that they're going to play "The Anthem" before Monday night football, they don't mean the national anthem? They mean the Hank Williams, Jr. song. I was confused.

And yes, it has been months since the SuperBowl, literally. But now is as good a time as any to finally put up pictures. I have to say it may be my favorite cake I've ever made.

The cake was for one of the hubbin's coworkers at TCTMNBN. Her only request was that they wanted a cake "just like John's." Which was a Pittsburg Steelers cake. (And for the record, I still think that Ben Roethlisberger is a terrible person [allegedly], I'm just sayin'.) But seeing as how it was the SuperBowl, I thought I'd do it up a little. The addition of the SuperBowl logo, complete with ther Jerry Jones Stadium, was perfect.

I adore the tiny little Steelers helmet. Look at the little indention near the mask!

 The Greenbay helmet didn't turn out as nice, but still...

AND the Packers won and I rejoiced at the demise of Mr. Roethisberger.

Happy Birthday Marissa!

It's been a while since I've posted, so I thought I start it off with something awesome. A friend of a friend saw a cake I made and asked me about making her soon-to-be two-year-old daughter a Toy Story birthday cake. Yay!

Since it was for a girl, she wanted something feminine added to it and suggested Jessie. Now I hadn't seen the second Toy Story (or even the third) so I borrowed the DVD from my particularly attractive friends Melinda and Erik. Can I admit something? Didn't think it was very good. Yes, I said it. It was just not... the first one.

The cake is Sylvia Weistock's Yellow Cake recipe with fresh strawberries between the layers and vanilla buttercream.

But I got a picture of a cake that the MOBG (mom of the birthday girl) liked and ran with it. Fondant models all the way! The hard part is that these characters are so well known, that I couldn't mess it up. People would know it looked...off. The faces of Jessie, Woody, and Buzz were the worst and I wasn't happy at all with them. But the other details that were added hopefully saved them. Without further ado:

The alien- Because he's one of my favorite characters from the original. This is a blurry picture because it's from my phone, but it's such a great shot that I can't help but share.

Mr. Potatohead- I love him too, he was actually a really fun one to make, but the arms were a pain.

And check out the details on his little blue shoes:

Hamm- The picture is a little blurry, but I was enchanted by this little guy.

And look at the perfect little squiggly tail!

I tried to put all the details I could, so check out Jessie's braid:

And Woody's handkerchief:

And pay attention to the hats these two have on. I seriously thought these things were going to be the death of me.

And Buzz's suit:

I wanted to do something nice with the base and thought wood floors would fit the theme. I marbled two colors of brown together, then used a knife to make the boards, a toothpick to make more wood grain texture, and the end of a piping tip for the nails.

Happy Birthday Marissa!



A Thanksgiving Injury

So this isn't about anything I made, other than an ass of myself. I'm a total clutz, particularly in the kitchen and I've managed to burn myself in all sorts of strange and weird places. Have you seen the title of the blog?! I thought I'd share this one. This one is due to me reaching into the oven to get a sweet potato wonton and hitting my hand on the top burner. It was totally worth it though.

(Like four days post actually burning myself)

There's at least cake in the name

I realize that there hasn't been just a whole lot of cakes here lately, but this is sorta close. The hubbin's boss at TCTMNBN had a birthday a while back and I got word that she's a big cheesecake fan. So I made her a chocolate cheesecake. Bittersweet chocolate, real Oreo crust (couldn't find the ready-made crumbs at the store so I ended up separating and crushing the cookies myself), and white chocolate topping. I think this may be the recipe I used, but honestly, it's been a while. I heard it went over well.

I even requested a piece of the cheesecake make its way back home so I could have some.