Oma's Bday Cake

I had about 12 ideas for this cake. I had very little direction- use fondant, any color, make it 'impressive', flavor/color didn't matter. OK.... At this point, open ended cake directions are not good. I need some focus because my mind races with possibilities of what I would like to try. And then I end up wanting to do too much and then the cake loses its focus.

First, I needed to whip up some buttercream. My bestie came over and kept me company while I got this going. I got to share w/ her the magnificence of watching the egg whites and sugar whip up to pearly white goodness in the Kitchen aid... and she also witnessed first hand the ridiculous amount of butter that goes in as well... yikes.

I've showed the pictures of the buttercream already so I won't bore you with that, or me actually stacking the cake. It is a 6 inch round yellow cake with banana ganache, covered in HOMEMADE marshmallow vanilla fondant in white. I LOVE that I know how to make fondant now :)


Notice the pink bow loops in the background? Yeah.. I should have assembled the bow before working on the cake. Lesson Learned. It needs to harden and set well before placing it on the cake. Sigh... I got too excited.

Then I rolled out some bright green fondant. I decided on making bright pink and green polka dots in addition to the bright pink bow... So I cut out circles in 2 different sizes and started to throw them on the cake...
Then I added the 'ribbons' that I THOUGHT were hardened enough to hold their bend. Two things: 1) they weren't hard enough. Why? I have no idea. They kept falling flat. 2) I should have put these on BEFORE I did the polka dots.
It was at this point that I realized, "Hey I should have assembled the bow by now so I could set it on the cake RIGHT now". Sigh... So I just put the bow together using a TON of frosting to hold it in place and put it in the freezer for a while. Then I put it on top of the cake and Voila!


I LOVE this little cake. I think it's very cute and girlie. Probably too youthful for an Oma, but whatever I had little direction so they get what they get ;) After I put the bow on I threw it in the freezer again to harden up and now on to #1's cake...

Fondant Bow, step one

I have two cakes to work on this weekend... a birthday girl cake and #1's cake... Moochie and #1 have had the WORST colds all winter. Seems like I'm constantly wiping runny noses and demanding they 'blow' into Kleenex. Can warm weather come QUICKER?

It's been difficult to do the usual evening baking/decorating as they both have been wanting extra cuddling before bed time so I was getting nervous yesterday when I hadn't even begun work on either cake.

After doing some research on 'bows' for cakes, I found some good tips and tricks and it seemed fairly simple. I decided on pink, mostly because I had some left over from the Wubbzy cake, and after I came home from the gym (I have my first weigh in on Monday w/ Buddy Love)I rolled it out and began cutting my bows.




Seriously, this was super easy. I'm waiting for them to harden up enough to put the bow together (about 2 days), but I don't imagine it getting much tougher. It was laughable how easy this was and to think cake decorators charge a pretty penny for a bow topper... Now I know...

As of this morning they were not hard enough yet, so we will see when I get home from work and I'll probably put it together tomorrow night and start working on #1's Lightning McQueen cake. Yeah, I bit the bullet and decided 'why not?' Again, took to the internet and did a ton of research as to HOW I can do this. And to save me some grief I bought red fondant pre-made (UGH, SO expensive), but saves me time and irritation.

**SIDE NOTE- my fridge arrived yesterday. scary moment when it almost didn't fit because of a possible mis-measurment. But, it fits. Bummer was that the stainless isn't magnetized. :( It looked so sad and bare without magnets.... so it had to be outfitted w/ it's first sticker. A HUGE pink Spitfire head. Check it out on my twitter- @sweetsandyb

I so appreciate the fridge now... and it came just in time- it warmed up to 40 yesterday and the food wasn't going to survive in the garage any longer. That's another one of those things that has happened to me that I said "seriously? I can't believe I live here... it's so cold I can put my milk in the garage and it is colder than the fridge...."