Hey there, what’s up?
Look, I made a cake! It’s been a while, I know. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed kneading the fondant. I’ve missed icing the cakes. I’ve missed the last minute panicking when something inevitably falls apart.
But I’m back! Life is starting to settle down again so maybe I’ll have some time to bake some more delicious treats. Or maybe not bake because it’s 95 degrees at all points in time. Maybe I’ll just make lots and lots of ice cream.
Anyways…graduation cake! Congrats Sean!
I really wish I could grow things. I have somehow managed to defy the laws of nature and genetics and have inherited The Jackster’s (non)ability to grow…anything. I mean, I’ve killed bamboo! I’m pretty sure all you have to do to keep bamboo alive is give it water every two weeks or so. And somehow I’ve even failed at that. My poor bamboo is now just one pathetic, withering stalk, sadly hanging on for dear life having outlasted it’s less robust comrades. I once broke an orchid in half taking it out of the plastic container protecting the flower. Plants do not like me.
Lucky for me, rarely does anyone ask me to take care of plants for them. I believe I was once asked to take care of a basil plant and I think we can all guess how that turned out. Warning: do not ask me to take care of plants for you if you actually want to have a living plant when you return.
I have a bit more luck with flowers that are…well…not actually alive. This garden cake was for a first birthday and its myriad of flowers and adorable animals is definitely more my garden style. I only wish I could have actual plants this cheery and fun (and alive), but for now I’ll stick to the cake versions. I feel like they can’t help but put a smile on your face!
The baby blocks are back! They’re almost square and kinda cute and this time they have Hebrew letters! Yup, I free-handed those puppies myself. Bonus points to anyone who can read what they say.
There were supposed to be only six blocks, but apparently my engineering background and long years of higher education left me unable to divide twelve by three correctly. Turns out three goes into twelve four times. Alas, I ended up with eight blocks which worked out perfectly since Cody’s Hebrew name (oops, did I just give it away?) has eight letters in it. I guess this time two wrongs did make a right.
And what do you do when you have lots and lots of leftover cake? You have a cake fight! I’m not sure if I can fully describe the feeling of smooshing cake and icing into someone’s face. But it’s totally satisfying and I highly recommend it. (Plus, then you smell delicious.) (And icing does wonders for your skin. (Ok, I’m totally making that up. I have no idea if icing has any positive or negative effects on your skin. Perhaps ask your friendly dermatologist?))
Right, so in real life I’m an engineer. I work for a company and we build spacecraft. No joke.
In college I worked on a satellite. It’s called CUSat and it’s supposed to go to space. No joke.
This is a CUSat cake. We’re going to launch it on a brownie rocket. No joke. OK, that was a joke. And a bad one at that.
You see, this cake is supposed to be crooked. I’ve actually made this cake before and The Jackster promptly asked me if I had messed up because it was all tilted. I appreciate the confidence, Mom!
I quite like this cake. It’s fun and pretty and full of whimsy and class (black, white, and pink is just a classy color combo, don’t ya think?).
And I think this is my best piping job so far, if I do say so myself.
Congratulations Jes on your graduation!
While the Celtics handle the Magic, the Lakers are playing the Suns. That’s about the extent of my knowledge and interest in NBA basketball.
Ok, that’s a lie. I know that Steve Nash looks really short on TV, but he’s actually quite tall when standing next to regular people. I know the Celtics beat the Lakers for the NBA Championship in 2008. And I know that basketball was invented in Springfield, MA because I drove by the Basketball Hall of Fame many many times as a child and then even more when driving to college. And yet somehow I’ve never been inside. (Probably due to my lack of enthusiasm for the sport of basketball in general.)
See, look at all of that basketball knowledge I’ve just dropped on you.
And on top of that, you get to see this sweet cake I made. Even though it’s Kobe Bryant’s number (who I apparently inexplicably dislike). Even though it’s a Lakers cake. The Lakers! (Apparently the Lakers-Celtics rivalry was once something akin to the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry which is something I can understand). So as a non-committal-apathetic-yet-obligated-Celtics fan, it was a tough sell. Look what I do for you lovely people.
The cake was chocolate cake with chocolate icing, except the basketball, which for obvious reasons was vanilla icing. Hope you had a happy birthday Aren!
I’ve had some interesting cake requests in the short time I’ve been doing this. I had the snowblower with the bloody finger, the music playing boxing gloves, a now defunct military satellite, and a Christmas octopus, but this was by far the weirdest cake request I’ve had yet.
A pair of thumbs up? Thumbs up? Two thumbs up? I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. Let’s put it this way…two hands giving thumbs up. Approval for all. Or one confused game of 7-UP.
I must admit, I wasn’t really sure how to approach making a thumbs up cake. So, I basically free-handed (har har) it. Basically, I stood there giving myself the a thumb(s) up and carved the cake accordingly. Then I repeated for the other hand (which was decidedly more complicated given that I am not cake-carving ambidextrous).
Some buttercreme icing and a layer of fondant was all it took to finish up this handy cake (ok, that one was really bad).
Happy Birthday! I’m sorry I missed it!
Remember that last post I did about this ginormous cake? Well, this is what it turned out to be:
Yup, a First Communion cake! I really enjoyed making this cake. The concept was fairly simple, but I thought the design was quite elegant. The hardest part about this cake for me was the piping. I always get so nervous piping on letters because I’m worried that the letters are going to be too big, or the spacing is going to be off, or I’m going to make a spelling mistake, or the writing will be crooked. Slowly but surely my piping skills are improving though.
The little girl also really wanted a butterfly on the cake. This one was made my pressing fondant into a silicone mold. It was super easy to make, but came out quite nice if I do say so myself.
I made two other cakes this weekend which I will be posting soon…as soon as I stop falling asleep.
Congratulations Valarie on your First Communion!
You’re probably wondering who Hadi is. And why he says “Yes!”
Hadi is one of my coworkers. And the other day was his birthday. And I don’t know why he says “Yes!”, but most of the time “Yes!” is a pretty good answer. Unless the question is, “May I please leave you in the middle of the ocean holding onto a small piece of drift wood with your feet dangling in the water, just waiting to be eaten by a giant fish?”
Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyways…as you may (hopefully!) have figured out from the picture, Hadi likes soccer. Hadi also used to do taekwondo. I currently do taekwondo. This led to some bonding over taekwondo. And a small sorta Hadi-like figure in a taekwondo outfit. Also, this might be the most times the word “taekwondo” has been used in a non-taekwondo related website.
Also, my computer’s suggested spelling correction for “taekwondo” is “Wonderbra”. I think we can leave it at that.
Wow, this post diverged. Sorry about that Hadi! Happy Birthday!
I have pulled three all-nighters in my entire life. The first one was before the last day of the semester my senior year of college. We had to make sumo wrestling robots and ours was having programming issues. We spent all night debugging our program just to decide at the last minute our logic was too complicated and go back to what we started the evening with 10 hours earlier. Our robot’s name was The Iron Chef and we ended up doing pretty well in the competition.
The second all-nighter I ever pulled was an epically disastrous night in which I tried to bake, decorate, and bag 1000 sugar cookies in a 34-hour period. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. And leads to bad things.
My third all-nighter had a much better and actually productive result. After two spectacular failures, I opened a can of coke, picked up my pencil…and planned ahead! Lots of times I sort of go off the cuff when making my cakes. I have a vague idea in my head and the execution is based on some skill, a lot of luck, and a few prayers to the icing gods.
I had tried that earlier in the week and apparently my madd cake skillz were a little out of whack or I was missing a lot of luck because the results were less than pretty. For the second go around (and reason for the all-nighter. That and some optimistically planned events of the previous day.) I did some prep work, thought about it a little bit, and was a little more vigorous with my prayers to the icing gods.
And the result…well you can judge for yourself.
