Channeling my small town roots

Hello friends! It's been a few months since I've updated around here, but I've been spending most of my days writing papers and trying not to get punched in the face by five year olds. I'm loving my internship this semester, but that plus classes doesn't leave much time for the world of cake art.

So here's what I've been up to. This first cake was made for Kevin's cousin Jaime's birthday. For those of you who don't know her, she loves black, silver, and stars. I felt this was appropriate. All in all it was a success, though that was the evening I tried over a dog and caused over $3,000 worth of damage to the birthday girl's kitten. So yeah...does a nice cake make up for a broken cat? I'm not totally sure.

The flowers are gum paste, which I'm still getting used to working with. I'm not loving it. They were supposed to be much deeper in color, more jewel toned, but as I mixed the colors it kept getting so unbelievably sticky that I was forced to use approximately 7000 pounds of confectioner's sugar just so it wouldn't stick to my hands. So it's a little more muted than I wanted. Ah well, at least I injured the cat.

This next cake was for my friend Katie's friend's bridal shower. I had some problems with this and did have a minor breakdown on the floor in the bedroom in which I said (wept) something to the effect of, "What the hell do I think I'm doing?! Why do people let me make cakes?! Should I go to the grocery store and buy her a new one??" Kevin intervened at this point and came to my rescue. It was an engineering problem.

The thing was that this was the first time I had made a three tiered cake and it never occurred to me to make use of the very intelligent invention of cake separators. Instead, I chose to simply stack the cakes on top of each other which cause all of the frosting on the bottom tier to bulge out and take the fondant with it. Kevin made me a makeshift cake separator a la MacGyver out of cardboard and wooden dowels and I wiped the mascara tracks of my face. I think it's pretty cute in the end.

Last weekend the girls at school threw a bridal shower for our friend Lindsay who is getting married this December. I couldn't be there because Kevin and I had tickets for the Verde Canyon Railroad (see below) but I sent a cake in my absence.

I decided to whip out the classic doll cake and then ripped the head and arms off the torso because I wanted it to look like a dress form, not a doll. Bonus: I saved the head and arms for Halloween decorations. I'm thinking Barbie drowning in the guacamole.

For the dress I piped drop flowers over fondant and attached a blue sash. Lindsay was a little vague about exactly what color blue is in her wedding, so I made an executive decision. I added pearls down the back to look like buttons and piped on the little pearl necklace. It's possible that I unintentionally designed the wedding dress I'd like to have.

I haven't had a chance to talk to Lindsay and see if she liked it, but I hope she did.

Last but not least, I am super excited to show you guys the cake that I am entering in the AZ State Fair! As a kid I entered something in the Chester Fair every year and I got the itch to do it again this year. Just on a much bigger scale. You know, fewer collections and more actual entries. So here is my sushi boat. I watered down brown gel food coloring and painted it to look like wood.

My brother Seth sent me a few tips including using fruit leather as the seaweed wrap and real sticky rice. I found natural grape fruit rollups that worked perfectly, but the sticky rice didn't work that well for me. The liquid in the rice caused the fondant to melt and get all gross and runny, so I started again with white sprinkles.

I used shortening to make the fish look all shiny.

I kind of love the ginger and wasabi...

What do you think, do I stand a chance? I submit it tomorrow and the judging is on Wednesday. We'll see what happens...

PS People have been telling me that they can't comment without a profile and I didn't realize that was a setting I could change, but it is. So I changed it. Comment away!!