Before I begin with the first cake, I must share with you just how amazing my friend Jen is. As an early graduation gift she purchased me the truly fantastic Cricut Cake. Now, for those of you who are not Mormon or not scrapbookers, you may not be aware of this incredible machine. The original Cricut is a brilliant device that will cut pretty much anything you tell it out of gorgeous paper with which to festoon your photo albums, rumpus rooms, prison cells or anywhere else that is lacking paisley owls. The brilliant manufacturers over at ProvoCraft decided to take this concept and apply it to cake decorating. That's right sports fans, I currently own a machine that will cut out pretty much anything I want out of sheets of frosting. Again, it's called the Cricut Cake. I'll wait while you google it...I have been coveting this machine pretty much since I started dabbling in cake decorating and cannot even express how excited I am to own it. Thanks, Jen!!
I got the chance to use it this past month on my first big time wedding cake. My darling friend Katie was a bridesmaid in a wedding and passed my name along to the bride since she, just like Lindsay, was smart enough to buy sheet cakes and have an amateur like me make a small one to cut into. She send me a few ideas and the colors of the wedding (navy blue and bright yellow, adorable) and I put something together for her. Before I get to the pictures, I have to tell you that I have never had more problems with a cake than I had with this one. I think it's because I was completely stressed out that I was making a real wedding cake for a person I couldn't pick out of a lineup. The cakes immediately crumbled as I started to cover them, making the fondant all bumpy and gross. That wasn't the real problem, however. I knew I could cover that with flowers. The real problem came in my execution of the designs for the middle tier. Equipped with my new Cricut Cake, I set to work making the gorgeous filigree designs. Now, for those of you who don't know this, I am sad to report that I am the owner of rather large man hands, complete with stubby fingers. While these are excellent for opening pickle jars and palming basketballs, they make work with delicate, intricate pieces of frosting quite difficult. I had to make about 9 of them to have 4 that were passable. I may have cried. Twice. In the end however, I think it was beautiful.
Now, as I may have mentioned, I graduated this past weekend. My endlessly generous Grandmother throw me a party and my endlessly wonderful Mother was in town to make it all come together. I will be including pictures of the whole party, not just the desserts, because I think it's so adorable that I can't bear the thought that my East Coast friends and family couldn't experience it.
I made three kinds of cupcakes: red velvet, chocolate espresso, and strawberry sundae. The sundae cupcakes are strawberry cake, chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream, and a cherry gumball.
I served Arnold Palmers in mason jars with paper straws. I know. So cute you want to die a little.
Somehow there didn't end up being pictures, but my mom and I made huge, gorgeous pink poms that hung over the dessert table. They took about 7 hours longer than was actually worth it.
After everyone had left and I managed to crawl out of bed yesterday, I set to work making a birthday cake for one of my favorite little girls, Emmy. She's the daughter of our friends Jesse and Jen (yes the same Jen who bought me the greatest invention since the wheel) and she turns three next week (on the same day that Kevin turns 31). She's a huge Minnie Mouse fan and Jen asked me to make her a Minnie cake. How could I say no, right? We decided fondant would be wasted on a group of preschoolers to I covered it in buttercream and saved the fondant for the decorations.
The Minnie head is made of half of a styrofoam ball and I used my Cricut to make the little Mickey silhouettes.
The birthday girl, already covered in frosting, blowing out the candles. Isn't she gorgeous? Women pay good money to get their hair to look like that.
P.S. Yay me!
