Cake Competition prep: Day 1

Hi!

I didn't get "a lot" of stuff done on my cake today, but I did.... if that makes any sense! lol

No cakes were baked, but I cleared out my kitchen, made lists, finalized the design (it's totally awesome, if I do say so myself.... nobody ever accused me of not being ambitious THAT's for sure!!) and started some of the prep work. I swear, if it were possible to get contact diabetes, I would have gone into a coma tonight!

I made:
2 batches of butter cream
1 batch modeling chocolate (I think I may need 2 or 3 batches, but I only had enough chocolate for 1)
1 batch Rice Krispie treats (I like these better than cake... it was all I could do not to eat the whole batch!! lol)
2 batches of royal icing double (Might be too runny, I might need to add more sugar... we'll have to see)
A Gelatin sheet (I'm going to have a "water" element and this is a really cool technique that I discovered on the internet)
a double batch of piping gel

I'm punking out and buying the fondant. I just don't have the time or sanity to try and make it right now. For me, fondant outcomes tend to rely more on the position of the moon and some sort of mystical chant/dance/special handshake that I am not privy to, than my actual skills. I nearly had a breakdown in September over making the stupid fondant (ANTS were in my sugar!! and you don't really notice powdered sugar ants until you have freckled fondant. At that point in time, you either chuck it, take a deep breath and have a good cry or try to convince everyone that you used fancy vanilla beans in your recipe....)

I'm really pushing my skill set with this cake. It's going to be a stacked AND tiered cake*. It will have figures modeled out of chocolate and dusted with lustre dust to look like bronze*. It will have a cool "fountain" with water.* piped royal icing decorations* Handmade flowers and ferns* and a bunch of other cool stuff, I'm not gonna tell you about right now :) You will just have to follow along if you want to see the final product!



*all stuff I have ever done

OMG OMG OMG!!!

As you know (if you've been reading, lol) that I finished my first Wilton course on Wednesday. After class, I was talking with my instructor and she asked me if I had ever thought about doing a cake competition. I told her that I *had* thought about it, but that I didn't have any idea where to find one locally. She said that she got an email the other day about one in the area and that I should check it out. She told me that Duff Goldman from Ace of Cakes was going to judge it.


(*squeal* I wanna work there for a week.... just to absorb the knowledge!)

I googled and found the website, but the web page said that entries had closed at 5 pm that day. I was all bummed out, and I read the rules in a "woulda, coulda, shoulda" mood and I discovered in the fine print that the entries were to be closed on March 4 at 5pm. After a few emails back and forth, the powers that be decided that due to a technicality (the web guy didn't change the rules when they changed the date every where else on the website) that they would send me an application. I filled it out and sent it in with pictures of my airplane, firetruck, blue flower, and hand of cards cake.

I've been on pins and needles for a day in a half, part of me desperately hoping they pick me and the other half dreading it.




I got an acceptance email at 4pm today!!!!



OMG OMG OMG!!!


I have to go up against 55 other cakes, most of whom have been planning/preparing their cakes for weeks..... at a venue that is 3 hours away..... in the middle of spring break.


*breathe* *breathe* *breathe* *breathe* *breathe* *breathe*



This is the competition http://cakechallenge.missouri.edu/ The theme is “A Mizzou Spring.” I have been madly googling, because not only do I have JUST 10 days to pull this cake out of thin air, I have NEVER BEEN TO MIZZOU!!! lol

Oh well! I have tons of ideas and I'm hoping to "make it Bigger, make it Badder, make it AWESOME!!!" enough.


ACK!!!





Anyone want to come clean my house??

More Cake!!

I just finished the Wilton Cake Decorating Basics Course I (four week class covering the basics of cake decorating), and I have been reminded that I abso-freakin-lutely HATE working in just buttercream! lol. Can't stand it!! The second class in this course had me throwing a tantrum/meltdown to rival any 2 yr olds! (It probably didn't help that I hadn't eaten all day and was hopped up on diet coke). lol

I have redeemed myself (I believe) with tonight's cake. It was my final for the class and I think it turned out very nicely.

When did this become a cake blog??

lol I don't know! But here you go.... ANOTHER cake post!

Hubby's department needed cake for some dealy-o at work where some high octane muckety-mucks are coming through and he asked me last Saturday if I'd be willing to volunteer to make it. For Today.... or Friday morning by 10 am to be specific.

And like the moron that I am, I said "Sure! Why not! It won't be too hard to whip up a cake! What do you need?"

This cake has been the BANE of my existence! It went from one big cake, to seven small cakes, to seven large cakes, and back down to 2 cakes.... one huge and one pretty big. I was ready to kill myself before I even broke out the kitchen aide! But you know me... I'm game for anything (or insane... the votes are still out and it could go either way.)

So I went to the store for the supplies for White Almond Sour Cream Cake (my "go to" cake when I have to do some carving and when I'm covering with fondant), buttercream and fondant. Yes.... I MADE my own fondant and buttercream (which way are you gonna vote now? lol) and baked three 12 x 18 sheet cakes... that ended up being 11x17 after I carved and leveled them. My stupid oven bakes crooked so I have to put the wet wraps on the pan and spin the cakes 3 times while baking. I still end up with cake that is 1 in tall in one corner and almost 3 in the other. I end up with more cake in the carvings bowl than I do on the board! lol

Carving, covering, crying, stripping, re-covering, lying in the fetal position on the floor of the closet vibrating in a sugar induced seizure, panicked calls to Cake Guru friend after a fondant emergency (MANY thanks Anna Mae!!), several sleepless nights, fast food and tons of hand painting later, I have 2 beautiful cakes to present at the event. My kitchen looks like the opening scene in NCIS and if you didn't know I was working with an insane amount of powdered sugar, you'd think it was a drug bust gone bad! lol

I think they came out Totally Awesome! (If I do say so myself) The theme is "Poker", so I made a "Hand" of cards and a deck of cards. The hand of cards ended up being 24 z 20 and the deck ended up being 11 x 17! From now on, I will only make cute, small botique cakes. If I need to feed a large amount of people, I'll make a plain sheet cake to hide in the back and serve, lol!















I have come to the conclusion that I like the decorating and eating of the cake. I need Minions



to bake, make the fondant, buttercream and bring me already baked/covered cakes to be painted or decorated. Then they need to clean up and set my kitchen to rights.

Oh.... and cook dinner and parent my child while I'm doing the cakes! lol

Any volunteers??






Eta: I guess all that money Mom and Dad spent on my Graphic Design degree didn't go to waste after all, lol!!

It's that time of year again! This Year... Airplane Birthday Cake!

My baby has turned 6! SIX!!! How the heck did that happen? It seems like *just* yesterday that I was being turned inside out (literally, lol) after 54 hours of labor! Well... maybe not yesterday... but recently, lol.

So.... as you may or may not know, I tend to go a *tad* overboard when it comes to the kid's birthday party. I don't think I blogged last year's firetruck party (we got a real firetruck to come to the party for the kids to climb on and I made a firetruck cake.... it was totally cool), so I'll be sure to do that soon.

But on to this year's party.

We had an airplane party this year. So, of COURSE, we had to have an airplane cake! Dearest hubby made me a super fabulous base to build my cake on to make it look like it was flying.


When I make a cake, I tend to use my ruler, computer and scissors as much as I use a spatula! lol It tends to be more of an "arts and crafts project" than a cake! lol




Visualization is KEY!




Now... I have an oven that bakes SUPER unevenly, so I end up having to bake FOUR 9x13 cakes just to get enough cake to carve the final product out of.... Hubs calls this the "frankenstein approach" to cake decorating.



(note the super awesome frame.... and please ignore the messy kitchen, I baked four 9x13 cakes, 40 cupcakes, made a double batch of buttercream and 2 batches of fondant all in one day... I was getting a little frazzled near the end to say the least)


Crumb coat!







Aaaaand we have fondant!










Before you think I am too awesome.... check out the underside.... it was UGLY!! lol I was *supposed* to put a bunch of cotton underneath for "clouds" to cover that up, but the cotton disappeared, so that didn't happen.






Now.... just add a little edible paint......






Add some Fondant covered rice krispie engines... and you've got an AIRPLANE CAKE! Wahoo!








I think he liked it!





ETA 10/7/2010 A friend of mine emailed me and told me that I forgot to blog LAST year's firetruck cake and party. I PROMISE that I'll post it later this week. Watch this space!

Toot Toot! All aboard the Cupcake Train!!

**Warning - Picture overload ahead!!**

James's birthday party was in September and since I am not above tooting my own horn most of the people who read this blog weren't able to be there, I thought I would share the cupcake train I made for him instead of a cake. I was really pleased with the outcome.

The finished product:





It was a HUGE hit and I'm glad that we used it as the centerpiece on the main table. You should have seen the kids' eyes!! They were as huge as saucers when they saw it.

*phew*


From inception to completion!

I was researching "train cakes" in anticipation of James's birthday and came across this Thomas Cupcake Train and thought "PERFECT!! James will LOVE that!!" And he did!

Now the problem was, how should I construct it?? I wasn't a huge fan of the triple wide cars and the construction paper tracks (I knew I could go way cuter! lol) so I had to come up a solution that I could live with, but that wasn't going to a) break the bank or b) make me go insane with the construction.

And then I had it! I'd use the tracks and Thomas from James's leggo Thomas set! Perfect! I set the tracks up a few different ways before I finally decided the classic serpentine was the way to go. I calculated the size of the board that I would need to use and sent my minions to Home Depot to fulfill my wishes. The larger of the minions also painted the board green for me.

Since I CAN'T just have a cake on a green board (oh no!! That makes no sense!!) It must look like (a close approximation of) an actual train bed.... which of course necessitated another trip to the Mart of W for 2 different colors of special stone texture paint! I laid the tracks out, marked the board with chalk, and went to town. (Shoulda been a tagger.... I haz MAD skillz with some spray paint!)

Once the board was done... the rest, you might say, was cake! lol I glued the tracks down (with royal icing... can't make this permanent!!) and constructed the "cars" on Thursday night before the party.





I made the "cars" out of graham crackers, graham cracker sticks, mini oreos and royal icing. I glued 3 graham cracker sticks per stack with royal icing and let them dry. I glued mini oreos on each end of each stack when they dried. I used 3 of these stacks per graham cracker (again... glued on with royal icing) to construct each individual car.







Friday night, James decorated all the cupcakes (with mommy frosting and helping of course) We had a blast and I'm reasonably sure there were more M&M's in the child than there were on the cupcakes... eh... it was his birthday, why the heck not? I *was* going to make the Thomas out of cake, but a very brilliant friend of mine told me to "Reel in the Crazy, Sharon", lol. I am STILL grateful.... I think I would have seriously lost my mind! (Thanks Tracy!)

I don't have any pics of James blowing out his candle. ~insert sad face here~ Something ALWAYS seems to happen to prevent me from getting that picture. This year it was a huge lemonade tidal wave.... but I guess that's better than his 1st birthday, when one of the guests projectile vomited all over my kitchen! lol Ahhhhh.... the memories.

And speaking of memories.... here is a short retrospective of birthday cakes past....

1st - Lion cake




2nd - "I-2 Highway" cake




3rd - I punked out and bought a Thomas cake from the commissary. The little traitor James loved it!