Happy Birthday To Me!

It is a well known fact among those who know me that I take my birthday very seriously. I do not believe that I should have to do anything that I don't want to on that special day and I still, to this day, have trouble sleeping the night before. The occasion of my 27th birthday was this past week and I decided that I was going to make the cake for my party. When I mentioned this plan approximately 9,000 people said the exact same thing: "Laura! You can't make you own birthday cake!" To which I said, "Too bad, I'm doing it. So there." A few times I stuck out my tongue. Did I say 27th birthday? I meant 8th.

My birthday party was on Saturday night and happened to fall on the same weekend as my gorgeous friend Jenn's sister's bridal shower. She had asked me months ago to make a cake for the party and I was delighted (and only mildly annoyed that I didn't get to have a bridal shower too.) What that meant, however, was that I had a lot a baking to do in a short period of time. Jenn needed the cake early on Sunday so I decided that everything needed to be done by Saturday afternoon.

So Friday evening rolled around and Kevin was out so I turned up my IPod to a deafening level, made sure that there were plenty of Britney songs on the playlist and prepared to bake all the cakes that I needed. I used my favorite red velvet cake recipe and quadrupled it, so the whole baking thing took about 3 hours. Now, that's all well and good, but the unfortunate part was that each layer of my own cake crumbled as I tried to take it out of the pan to cool. I have no idea why, but it was late and I was too annoyed to start over so I decided that I needed to try to put it all back together with frosting and create some thing that mildly resembled a cake. I tried to patch all the holes and missing parts and what I ended up with was a very crooked, very lumpy, very bumpy birthday cake. I stayed up til 2am trying to make it look even a little presentable, but all I could see were all the mistakes.

Here is what it looked like at the party:

I was only partially happy with it and disappointed that I didn't love my own cake. There was originally a third tier but I threw it away and didn't let anyone look at the back. And because I am the daughter of Catherine and the granddaughter of Ida, when people complimented it, all I could do was point out everything that was wrong with it. And Kevin's cousin Jaime just looked at me and said, "And THAT is why you can't make your own birthday cake."

Luckily, nothing can take away how much I love it when everyone sings for me. LOVE it.

So my own cake was a learning experience. Jenn's sister's cake, however, was a horse of another color. Which is a phrase I have never used before and don't think I will again. Anyway, I was out of parchment paper, which I will use from now on to avoid more disasters like the previous one, but I did a much better coating and flouring (can flour be used as a verb? It can, right?) the pans, so each layer came out perfectly.

I waited until the next morning to begin decorating, as I felt maybe that night was cursed, and Jenn and our friend Lindsey (and her baby girl Isabel) came to help. They made the flowers that you saw if you scrolled down to look at the pictures before reading what I took the time to write. Way to be patient.

Anyway, her wedding colors are cream and bright blue, so we used those colors to make flowers. We used three sizes of sugar pearls and a sheer cream ribbon. Jenn said her mother bought a cake topper of two intertwined hearts, so we left the center open for that. I haven't really had a chance to chat with her about it, but I got a text that said that the cake was a hit. So I'm pretty happy about that.

When the time eventually comes, I think maybe I'll have someone else make my bridal shower cake. Any volunteers?

Nests and Courts

Some of you out there have never had the pleasure of meeting my boyfriend, Kevin. Here he is with half of our cats. (Did you know we have too many cats?)

For those people I have compiled the following list of 10 important Kevin facts.

1. He hates tomatoes. (Hates them with the fire of a thousand suns.)

2. He alphabetizes all his CDs, DVDs, and books. (The books are also organized by genre.)

3. He will only own cars with manual transmissions. (Which I have no idea how to operate.)

4. He loves the movie "Bring it on." (Seriously.)

5. He's obsessed with reading Bill Simmons' column on EPSN.com. (And also reading it aloud.)

6. He hates Tyra Banks. (I know this based on the amount of cussing at the TV that occurs when I watch America's Next Top Model.)

7. He enjoys music of the hip hop persuasion. (And often raps along with it.)

8. He loves Dr. Pepper. (Or Mr. Pibb in a pinch.)

9. He laughs at all his own jokes. (Laughs a lot.)

And most importantly...

10. He is a diehard, rabid Suns fan. (For those of you who don't know...that's basketball. I didn't know this until I lived here for at least 6 months.)

Kevin turned 30 last month and on this very special occasion, I decided to make him to following cake:

Here's a picture of the court at US Airways Center for reference.

Yes, I know the lines are a little shaky. I have a really hard time keeping my hand steady. I'm working on it. Whatever, I still think it's pretty cool and he loved it.

The next cake that I made was for my dear friend Jenn's housewarming party. She and her husband have spent the past bazillion (approximately) months gutting and rebuilding a house for themselves. It was a very long process, but they are all moved in and the place is GORGEOUS. I'm extremely jealous.

Anyway, they had a housewarming party this weekend to show off the results and I made a cake for the party. It looks like this:

The birds are the only inedible part of the cake. I was not delusional enough to think that I could sculpt birds out of fondant or gumpaste, so I hit the artificial flower aisle of my local Michaels and picked up some birdies. Don't judge. I'd like to see you make a sugar bird. Actually I would, so that I can learn.

Anyway, although I wanted the branches to be thick, I think in the future I'll make them a little more delicate. Kevin pointed out that they looked like poo. He's so sweet, always knows just what to say.

I'm pretty proud of this cake. It was the first one that I've done in which the fondant came out pretty perfectly with no bumps and bulges. I'm getting pretty good at this...

On last comment...I took Kevin to Seattle for his birthday last month and, among other things, we went to the INCREDIBLE cupcake shop "Cupcake Royale." Kevin had red velvet and I had salted caramel. To. Die. For. Here's me in front of the shop.

That's Ren and Stimpy. They're way existential

I'm going to start this post by quoting a conversation from one of the greatest movies of my generation: Clueless.

Tai: Do you think she's pretty?

Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.

Tai: What's a Monet?

Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away it's ok, but close up it's a big old mess.

With that in mind, I tried my hand at piping a few weeks ago. It took me about 2.5 hours, a painful hand cramp, and the results were pretty crappy. I have a very unsteady hand. This definitely needs more practice. The good news is that from far away, it was gorgeous! That doesn't do much for me, though, when it's on people's plates.

We only have photographic evidence of this cake because Kevin took pictures. I was too embarrassed.

Moving on...in order to celebrate the end of this ridiculous year of graduate school, my classmates and I decided to throw ourselves a big party before summer school started. So I seized the opportunity to make a cake. I call it, "The vacation we're bitter about not being able to take because we have to take ridiculous summer classes instead." It was red velvet with a cream cheese and rage filling.

The sun, fish, lobsters, crabs, and seahorses are made of white chocolate and I made them using molds. The rocks are candy covered chocolate pieces and the sand is made of crushed Nilla wafers and graham crackers. I had the brilliant idea to put the crumbs through my flour sifter to make them super fine. It worked great and the best part is that my sifter is permanently filled with crackers! Three trips through the dishwasher so far and no difference...

Anyhoo, this last cake that I made I couldn't decide whether or not to post. I think it's super adorable in theory, but I'm not real pleased with the execution. I made it very quickly and didn't take enough time to make sure that everything was even and the result is much bumpier than I would have liked. But, whatever, here it is.

Let me explain, my gorgeous friend Colleen just eloped to her baby daddy Doug and I had to make them a cake as soon as I found out. I figured, a miniature cake to celebrate a miniature wedding. It's a five inch bottom tier and a three inch top tier. So cute, right? Is it possible that I think I'm more adorable that I actually am? You be the judge.

Hippity Hop Hop

Ugh. I don't even want to talk about the disaster that was my Easter baking experience. But if I didn't want to talk about it, I guess I shouldn't have started this blog, so...touche. Here's what happened. I decided that this Easter I needed to make a cake in the shape of a adorable springtime animal. See the thing is that when I was younger my mother used to make a cake in the shape of a lamb every Easter and it was secretly my favorite dessert of the year. I actually just had a thought: maybe my jeans would be a smaller size if I didn't do things like rank dessert favorites...

Anyhoo, in my mind, the lamb mold was made of cast iron and weighed approximately 900 lbs, so I didn't even bother asking my mother to mail it to me and went in search of my very own lamb pan. (In actuality, it's made of aluminum and weighs next to nothing. Crap.) So it turns out that Wilton makes a lamb mold, which is sold at basically every store in the world short of Checker Auto Parts around Easter time. It also turns out that this particular lamb mold has an incredibly creepy smile and eyes that follow you no matter where you are in the room. I chose the bunny cake pan on the next shelf. Demonic lamb cake did not seem like the most appropriate of dessert options.

I digress. At some point in the past week I decided that I needed to also make cupcakes that looked like Easter baskets. I have no idea why, so don't ask me. So, sometime around 8pm on Saturday night I decided I should probably start the baking process, since I needed to be at Marie's house around 11am the next morning. Now, the bunny mold is 3D and has a small vent hole in the top. The directions clearly stated that the cake would be done when a toothpick inserted into the vent hole came out clean. Therefore, like any reasonable person would do, I took it out of the oven when the toothpick came out clean. Duh. Now here's a detail you need to remember: I, for a reason unbeknownst to me, turned off the oven at this point. I also put the cupcakes into said turned off oven. While the cupcakes were (not) baking I opened up the bunny mold and was instantly covered in molten cake batter. Turns out it was NOT done. And neither were the cupcakes. Cause generally one needs to turn on an oven in order to bake things. Who knew? Whatever, I remembered while at the grocery store at 10:45pm replenishing ingredients that I had forgotten to put oil in the cupcakes anyway, so even if they had cooked, they were missing a key ingredient. Once i remade them I decided to let them cool and decorate them before I went to bed. I dyed the frosting green and then coated them in light green crystal sugar. The handles are Sour Punch Straws. So cute right? Here's what they looked like when I went to bed. Which was 2 am.

Here's what they looked like when I woke.

Can ANYONE explain why they all broke in the middle?! I nearly cried.

So here's the point where I show you a million pictures of my completed bunny cake to make myself feel better about my baking disaster. Luckily the second cake was delicious and fully cooked. The grass is the ever popular dyed coconut, all the flowers are made by me out of fondant, and the eggs are Bailey's favorite mini Cadbury eggs.

How does one cut a cake like this without feeling like some sort of sick bunny killer? Next time I'll make it red velvet. Oh yeah, Mom, I have brown hair now.

Cha-ching!

Well hello again! Yeah, fine, it's been a month since I updated, whatever, sue me. Here's my excuse: I figured I'd wait til I had a few different delightful desserts to post about instead of one at a time. Is that weak? Can you tell that I was just procrastinating?

Anyway, whatever, let's move on, shall we? This week marks a momentous occasion in the life of me attempting to be a baker. I sold my first cake! Ta-dah! It turns out that Karen did actually want me to make a cake for the baby shower she was throwing. No joke, I decorated that cake in my head every night as I tried to fall asleep. But, more on that later...

A few weeks ago some friends of ours invited us over for dinner and I took the opportunity to make a cake to bring. Side note, have I forced you to go to bakerella.com yet? My lovely friend Bee turned me on to it and she has some of the best recipes and dessert ideas EVER. So I used her recipe for red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting. It might possibly be the moistest (most moist?) cake I have ever eaten. Go. Bake. It. Now. Ok, anyway, I made the cake and decided that it was a wasted opportunity to try something new, so I made my first attempt at fondant roses. Here are the results:

You like? I loooooove. They were super duper easy. I think next time I'll add a little edible glitter. Too much?

My next undertaking was St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. I made them about a week before St. Patrick's day and brought them into the group therapy session at school. (For those of you who don't know, my practicum this semester is with adults and I have a group session once a week with my client who has speech problems resulting from a stroke). I decided that since it was the last session before spring break that I needed to bring in a treat. However, I announced this to all the group members before I took the time to realize that I would need to bake them in between studying for and taking two exams and completing a very difficult assignment. It was quite a stupid moment for me. So yeah. They're cute, but less inspired then they could have been.

I used vanilla frosting and then rolled them in white crystal sugar. The shamrocks are sugar pieces like the footballs that I used in February. I think the green foil wrappers are my favorite. They got rave reviews. I took a nap.

Ok, ok, I know that you've been on the edge of your seat waiting to see the baby shower cake that I made so here it is! (Ignore Sophie in the background. I swear there's no cat hair in that cake).

I took a few pictures during the process to share with y'all. The cake is a lemon yellow cake that I made from scratch (again, the curtsey) with a vanilla buttercream. Both tiers are three layers. You can see the area that was uneven with the other two layers that I have to carve down.

Both tiers were covered with white fondant and then a sheer, shimmery white ribbon.

For the bottom tier I made white chocolate baby carriages which I attached with buttercream to pink fondant diamonds. Once they had set I placed them all the way around the cake.

Then I made chocolate diamonds and everywhere that the points meet is a sugar pearl. Yeah, I totally didn't make the pearls.

And here is the part that I became so involved in what I was doing that I forgot to take pictures. I'm pretty sure you can handle it. These are some pictures of the completed cake. I made the booties out of white chocolate just like the baby carriages.

What do you guys think?! Do you love it as much as I do??

Next up? Bunny cake for Easter...