~ Amy's Creations ~
Let them eat cake! Page Two
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My girlfriend's cake, very similar to Sarah's but with smaller tiers and fuchsia roses rather than lavender/blue ones |
The next cake I did was for a girlfriend of mine who got married Thanksgiving weekend, just a couple of months after Sarah's wedding. They had attended Sarah's wedding and she had fallen in love with Sarah's cake, and asked if I would be willing to do another one, a similar wedding cake, for her?
How could I refuse? She wanted three tiers, but a little bit smaller tiers than Sarah's cake was, and her color for the decorative roses was fuchsia...
The trick to this second bride's cake I put together was the fact it was being transported from my house in Chatham County to a lodge in Pigeon Forge, and I couldn't go, so couldn't take responsibility for the transportation! Once the cake was all finished, and the girl arrived to pick it up, I very carefully took
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Clearly, this cake was none the worse for wear, but sure could've been otherwise! |
each layer and maneuvered stable ground in the back seat, back floorboard and front floorboard for the three layers, she was driving to the next town 15 miles away, and the cakes were going to come OUT of her car and be put in the back of a PICKUP truck, for the trip to the mountains.
I coulda choked. I knew the cake was traveling to the mountains, but I had no clue it was going to be moved from one vehicle to another, and possibly, I was informed, another yet, depending on how many live bodies had to be picked up and carried over for the ceremony and celebration.
My fears were groundless. When they returned from their long weekend my girlfriend had nothing but wonderful things to say about the cake, and assured me it had weathered travel in different vehicles quite well, with nary a mark or scar. I couldn't have been happier.
I was asked to do a groom's cake for this wedding too, and this second groom wanted another repeat of the groom's cake I had done for Sarah's wedding. Only this time the wedding was in late November, and I still had to find fresh strawberries...
I admit, my creativity wasn't challenged much with the second bride's and groom's wedding cakes, but at least I was familiar with what I was doing, having gone through all of it before.
Warning: the next couple of cakes might be unfit for some viewers... ;-)
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My "Spring" disaster |
The next cake I did, using my newfound decorating skills, or pseudo-skills you might say, was a cake in the spring. I threw together this awful-looking concoction that wound up with uneven layers that weren't centered, and covered the thing with colorful flowers I made from fondant. The idea I had was a good one, basically, but the end result, well... you be the judge. Clearly, I think I was far below the higher expectation I set for myself with my two successful wedding cakes...
It was, at least, a chocolate cake under there, which everyone in my family loves, and the frosting was white buttercream which is very edible... The flowers were ALL made out of fondant though, with small buttercream accents, so were quite easily removed from the cake before anyone had to fork a bite into their mouth. I don't think a single one of us actually ate any of the flowers... Absolutely they are edible, they are sugar, or, rather, fondant is made from a sugar paste, but still, the taste is just a bit 'off' not to mention having to actually *chew* them ;-)
And yet, you might marvel, my cake baking and decorating did not stop there. My son-in-law's birthday is July 3, and that following July Sarah asked if I thought I could do a cake with some sort of Independence Day theme.
That was easy. A sheet cake decorated to look like the American flag!
If you think you can do it, she responded..
So I agreed to do the flag cake, but didn't get started soon enough to allow plenty of time for the decorations. The result was a decorated, but obviously rushed, cake. Far as I could tell, though, neither Billy nor Sarah had a complaint about it, as the cake was well eaten into on Billy's birthday, and they took home what remained uneaten. I do hafta admit though, that even though the red food coloring is labeled "tasteless" it is not. Not sure what it is about red coloring, but even the "tasteless" variety has that ewwwwww-ugh taste to it <sigh>.
My next "cake event" was my granddaughter's first birthday. Turning all of one year old was traumatic for me when my children were passing that landmark age, and so I set out to do something special for my granddaughter's first birthday.
When
I mentioned to Sarah Hannah's birthday cake and she asked what did I think I
would do for it, I asked her what she thought she might want. So, in keeping with the Winnie-The-Pooh theme of
Hannah's bedroom, her playpen, high chair, stroller and on, I suggested - and picked up
- a Winnie-shaped baking pan for her very first birthday cake. When Sarah saw
she was all for it, and excited.
It is actually pretty awesome to use one of these formed pans... and the paper they stick to the inside bottom of the pan gives you a very clear illustration of exactly what needs to be done to decorate the cake appropriately, as well as detailed, written instructions on the reverse. I was very excited about the Winnie cake. It actually looked easy!
Simple would have been a better word. It looked "SIMPLE" because easy, it was not!
Lemme ask you... How easy do you think it would be to pipe thousands of stars of different colors over the entire surface of a cake?
And not only that, but despite they fact they were informed well in advance of this birthday party that I would be doing a Winnie cake at my daughter's request, the other grandparents bought TWO cakes at a grocery store- one was a decorated birthday cake and the other a small-ish, 2-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting they forced my granddaughter to make a mess of in her high chair. I felt so sorry for that poor little girl, sitting there with chocolate all over her face (someone else smeared it there), crying, real tears crying, with frosting in her eyes and up her nose and all over the chair and floor :-(... But this is just one of many examples of how irresponsible these other people are about children.
So. Let us move on...
Don't stop here... Please go on to