15 february 2012

It's Wednesday! February 15! Valentine's Day is done and over and I couldn't be happier. Sounds a little sad, I realize, but I have spent the last week fulfilling over 50 Valentine cake orders. I kept my focus on today - the day I can forget about heart shaped cakes until next year. The truth is, I should really be looking forward to tomorrow, because today I have to fill in all those glaring blank spots in the cake display. Tomorrow - tomorrow I can really relax.

Furthermore, today is not only the midpoint of the week, but of the month as well. If you're on Instagram (I'm bdanderson on there), you may have noticed a lot of people playing along with the February photo a day prompts. Here's the first half of my month:

That last photo is the little cake I made for Curt for Valentine's Day. It's the same flavor as all those heart cakes {I definitely wanted to sample the cake - strawberry ice cream + chocolate shavings with red velvet cake, and chocolate ganache top. It was yum} He got me a box of Hot Tamales {my favorite} and a pretty red rose which found itself in an old maple syrup bottle now residing on my bedside. 

Not only was he so sweet to think of me, but he also got gift cards for ice cream for our moms and sisters! Yep, he's a keeper! 

How's your February going so far? Can you believe it is already half over?! Spring is just around the corner and I can't wait - it's been nothing but rain and cold here for weeks. Here's looking forward to a warm and sunny rest of the month! 

Let Them Eat Pretty Cakes

I have been seriously craving springtime lately, and my latest cakes are obvious evidence of that desire. I've been looking for excuses to decorate with colorful flowers and doodley dots and designs. For you view pleasure:

That little guy {cheesecake ice cream + raspberries with chocolate cake and ganache} tasted pretty darn good if I do say so myself. 

Where are you finding springtime inspiration? 

Is It February 15 Yet?

Actually, I'm more interested in getting to February 16. After I make sure all the people who don't care enough to plan ahead get their heart cakes on February 14 (aka VDay), I have to do clean-up on February 15 and get everything back to normal; then on February 16 I can sit down.

Not that I'm complaining, I love my job. I just don't like the people who call last minute and expect us to answer "How high?" when they say "Jump."

Or  the people who don't understand what it means to consume an ice cream cake. In case you were wondering:

~Yes, you DO have to keep it in the freezer. It is ice cream, it will melt if you don't.

~Set it out a couple minutes before you are ready to eat it, get a big knife and run it under hot water. Slice that baby up to your liking, and then {this is the key part} stick the remainder back in the freezer. Because, yes, if you leave it out, it will eventually melt.

~That said, it WILL BE OKAY for the 4 minutes it takes you to cut and serve. And no, you don't have to cut the entire cake at once. After you return it to the freezer, you can repeat the whole process until the cake is gone.

~And finally, no, I will not cut the cake for you before you come to pick it up. That's just sad.

Special shout-out to the lady I spent 7 minutes with on the phone explaining all this and more. Also apparently up for discussion: While the heart cake doesn't fit the "round" description, it will qualify for that $3 off coupon. I recommend a plain, non-serrated knife. It will only take you 20 minutes to get from here to Antioch, but if it makes you feel better, I'll put it in the deep freezer. The point of taking a phone number is so I can contact you in case of a weird emergency, so please don't give me a number and then tell me not to call it because the cake is a surprise. And no, I probably won't be there when you pick it up, so you'll have to bother someone else with all your questions. Ten bucks says this lady forgets the coupon when she comes to pick up the cake, but still wants her $3 off.

So yeah, I'm ready for no more Valentine's nonsense.

Nashville got hit with a 'blizzard' - did you hear? Curt got stuck in traffic for over 5 hours on his way home from work. It usually takes him about 20 minutes.

The roommates and I decided to suit up and take a walk in the snow to see what traffic looked like. It was chaos, to say the least.

The main road to our neighborhood has one big hill that turns into a disaster with even a little snow. Cars (and the people driving them) don't know how to make it up the hill.

Once they get up, they have to get down, but by this point they are so desperate that they've driven in all five lanes and there is no 'right way' anymore. Nothing but squealing tires, fishtailing cars, and mass confusion.

Lots of people had to give up and abandon their cars on the road and walk the rest of the way, even in our neighborhood.

This was the scene the next morning - I counted 40 deserted cars within a mile down the road. Oh yeah, did I mention this was all because of 1.5 inches of snow? One and a half inches.

I had a video, but I can't get it to upload, boo :( 

I'll try to figure it out and post it when I do. 

How about a little crafting? I had one last quilt top to finish up for Anna Maria Horner's Rainbow Around the Block. 

It came in the forms of a small quilt (the middle part in the black) and a stack of blocks that seemed to mesh well enough.

It worked well - I cut about half an inch off each side of the already-assembled top, then added the nine-patch border by deconstructing the corner blocks so they would fit in the mix. The result is a little wonky - the corners are a nice checker pattern while the middle sections are more elongated, but overall I think it was effective.

Last week, Katherine asked how I blogged from my bathtub - here you go Kat. Laptop + upside-down laundry basket = bathside office.

Which brings me to another exciting response: a winner to my little giveaway last week!

 Ann said...

Love the heart garland- so cute! I hope I win the amazeballs crochet dishclothes:)

Congrats Ann! I'll send you an email and you can claim your prize :) 

As for the rest of you, thanks for trying, I'll be sure to do another giveaway soon! 

I'll leave you with this little snapshot: my sweet husband wearing a shirt he hasn't been able to wear for YEARS. Curt has been working very hard to lose weight this year and I couldn't believe how skinny he looked, so I had to take his picture.

Festival of Cakes

I'm not sure if three cakes count as a "festival of cakes," but it sounded good, right?

I don't get a lot of chances to make creative cakes at work, but the Christmas season seemed like the perfect excuse. Inside these cakes is candy cane and dark chocolate ice creams, yum!

Then my favorite customers ordered a cake for their daughter's birthday party at school and it was, well, the icing on the cake :)

Decorated to match their party paper products. So cute, yeah?!

(This is for the same family who ordered the Paul Frank and rock & roll cakes.) 

Let Them Eat Cake

I've been very busy at work designing new cakes, especially since I started experimenting with marshmallow fondant. 

It's a simple recipe - mini marshmallows and a tiny bit of water, melted in the microwave, then mixed with powdered sugar. Mix, mix, mix, knead, knead, knead until you have a silky, not sticky, dough. Oh, and don't forget the Crisco - that's a great trick to keep it nice, although the first couple cake were done without it. 

[I should warn you - most of these photos were taken with my iPhone at work, so the quality is not the best, but you get the idea!]

My first fondant attempt: a Paul Frank Julius cake for Shelby's half-birthday party. 

The cake is frosted with sky blue bettercreme and red frosting accents on the top and bottom, as well as the writing. 

The trick here was getting the right flesh color for Julius - which ended up looking like I'd skinned a human, but it turned out great. And I should add - the inside of this cake was blue cotton candy ice cream with red velvet cake, so it even matched the inside! 

The same day, I made a Superman cake. 

Blue bettercreme, white frosting writing, red frosting on the bottom, and the logo is fondant. 

Next up - Thomas for a second birthday. 

I frosted the whole cake white, then smeared blue and green coloring on the top to fill in the grass and sky. The middle part is a little track the Thomas train moves around. The accents are all frosting.

The next cake was a big deal around the store, everyone really loved the ice skate cake! 

The birthday girl was having an ice skating party, her favorite colors are light blue, pink, green and yellow. And she likes flowers. And that's all I had to work with - her very trusting father left the design up to me.

I made the skates out of fondant, the laces are icing. The flowers on the side are also fondant. The birthday girl was in love with this cake, they even stopped in recently to tell me they are still (months later) talking about the skate cake! 

Now a very cool cake for Kailey - who happens to be Shelby's little sister (the Paul Frank cake at the top).

Kailey's mom brought me the party stationary (below) and left me free to design whatever I wanted.

I used pink and purple coloring to tie-dye the frosting all around the cake. The hear motif is made of fondant, the writing is icing. The spots are black fondant that I tore willy-nilly to get nice random, jagged spots. This is probably the coolest cake I've made yet! 

What happens when you call and order a dirt bike cake you need to pick up the following morning? 

This dirty looking cake! Frosted with oreo-tinted bettercreme, crumbed with a combo of oreos and graham cracker pie crust crumbs, fudge mud puddles, and green grass frosting. Pop a dirt bike toy from Target on top and - voila! - dirt bike cake. 

Here is a sweet cake for Alicia, who just so happens to be Shelby & Kailey's mom. (Can you tell the family loves our cakes?!) Alicia's husband ordered the cake for her, requesting just "flowers on top." 

So here you go Alicia, a simple, yet sophisticated cake with red icing flowers (a new trait I figured out), light blue frosting, and darker blue accents.

Finally, my most recent pride and joy: my dad's birthday cake.

Mom & Dad came to visit a few days after his birthday, so I wanted to make him a really special cake to celebrate. He loves his garden and had a successful harvest this summer, so why not recreate it on a cake?! 

All the veggies are fondant, rolled and molded into their respective shapes. The cake is frosted in green bettercreme, as well as the foliage. The dirt is, again, oreo and graham crumbs in a neat plot on top. I lined the square plot with chocolate ganache logs on all sides. 

I wanted a good mix of veggies and colors so I included: tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, peppers, squash, beans, purple cabbage, radishes, lettuce, and cucumbers! 

I built a bunch of sugary vegetables and then set them into the plot like any organized gardener would.

The cake turned out better than I could have imagined, my dad loved it, and it was delicious to eat (even thought it was terribly difficult [on my emotions] to cut into!) 

I'll be posting pictures of my parents' visit soon :-) 

What's your favorite cake? Have you tried marshmallow fondant yet? If not, you really should, it's easy (and cheap!) to make, and gives you the ability to make any cake you can imagine!