The Shower Cake That Could Have Been
So here’s a story for you cake-lovers – I was hired to make a baby shower cake for someone at work as part of a surprise shower. I had training that week, so I couldn’t go and had to send my delivery boy (aka hubby) in my place. This shower had been planned for months, and everything was planned to a tee.
When hubby showed up to drop off the cake, what did he discover? The mother-to-be was out sick for the week!
Tip #1: Cake doesn’t last forever. I’ll keep a slice in the fridge for about a week (but I have no idea what the FDA thinks is an appropriate number of days). But a whole, uneaten cake? Might as well toss it after 2-3, because the colors will start running together.
So, good sports they are, my team decided to make the best of the situation – and ate it. Apparently it was delicious. The next week when she was back at work, they showed her a picture and had a Costco substitute (which no one ate because we also had a pre-holiday potluck). Ah well.
Here’s the vanilla cake with tangy chocolate filling and buttercream icing, as the mother-to-be saw it in pictures (design based on the crib sheets):
Pretty Pretty Princess
I should note that whenever there are ugly cake pictures on here, it’s because hubby wasn’t home to take them. Any tips on good cake photography?
A coworker asked me to bake a cake for her daughter’s 1st birthday. Not being a mother myself, I never thought that babies need special cake ingredients – think I grew up on regular sugar and flour and I turned out…fine. Anyway, she had a recipe for a baby-friendly carrot cake, but all the special ingredients made me nervous that it wouldn’t turn out properly. In the spirit of fall (this was November), we ended up choosing an apple cake with cream cheese inside and out.
As inspiration, she gave me a napkin with the princess theme. I love sparkles!
Napkin below:
For the crown, I used royal icing on parchment, then laid it on the side of a pot for curvature.
Tip #1: If you plan to stand something 3D up, make sure you draw the bottom flat! I decided to curve it at the last minute, so when I went to put it on the cake, the bottom part wouldn’t sit. Hence the corner attempt.
Tip #2: An object is only as strong as its weakest point. I put too much pressure on the crown and it cracked! Oh lord. I did a quick royal icing repair job, but I wasn’t very happy:
The letters weren’t those storebought candy ones. Oh no – I didn’t even think of that option until after I did these. I used more royal icing and use pink sparkles to make it shine:
Tip #3: Make at least 3 times the amount of royal icing decorations you will need. Even if you’ve done it a thousand times, you don’t want to risk last minute breakage.
The finished product – thanks for asking me to do this, Christine!
Go Phillies GO!
Since today is a lazy Saturday, I decided I need to desperately start catching up on my posts.
Halloween this year coincided with a great Philly victory – the Phillies won the World Series! In tribute, I carved a pumpkin (it’s not blurry, I was afraid to carve them any straighter for fear of pumpkin implosion):
Makes me happy. 
I carved this with some small dremel bits.
Tip: CARVE OUTSIDE! And wear clothes you don’t care about, or that can be easily washed. See exhibit A below, with the pumpkin guts down my front within just a few minutes of carving.
