It's Miller time!

As soon as I got home from work I had to put the cake together. Dinner party was at 6:30 and the cake was being picked up at 5:30... For some STUPID reason I forgot to ask Nanny J to take the cake out of the freezer at 4:30. So when I pulled it out, the fondant was hard as a rock. Had to force the beer bottles in... But, in they went!



Then I added the "ice cubes"!



I should have made more... or at least played with the placement before I 'glued' them down w/ water.



The ones that look 'precarious' are actually toothpick-ed in to the fondant so they wouldn't fall off in transit



These pictures don't do the 'ice cubes' justice, so I'll take some close ups... hold on...

Igloo Beer Cooler cake take THREE

Ran a couple of miles, watched a little Homeward Bound with kiddies, searched for "Sally" the car from Cars (#1 knew exactly where she was... it's almost creepy how he can pretty much GPS locate any one of his cars at any given moment. Not like he has 5 of them. He has WELL over 200 cars and he can identify and locate any of them. Total Rainman moment we had tonight), bed time tuck-ins and then more cake work.

I added some blue fondant to the white fondant, nuked it for about 15 seconds in the microwave and then made little ice cubes. Not gonna lie, stole that idea from another beer cooler cake. I set some on tooth picks to harden up and stuck them on foam to dry over night:



And here you can see I added the 'handles' to the cooler and the brand name



That's it for tonight, I"ll assemble tomorrow for delivery. Thus far, I'm not entirely impressed with this cake. I just don't like it too much- and I don't feel like it really advanced my skills much- especially because I couldn't lay the red fondant well. I'm not too proud of it... Maybe it will look better when I put it all together.

Igloo Cooler cake continues

More work on the Cooler Cake after dinner tonight. I thought I could get it wrapped in fondant between dinner and the gym in no time flat. Turns out, not so much. I guess I've never fondant covered a square cake and I didn't think it would be hard. It's a cube for goodness sake. Yeah, it was harder than I thought. The corners just sucked, the fondant kept cracking... You know what it looks like? Like elephant wrinkles. You know how they get those wrinkles around their ankles? That's what it looks like. :)
SO, I had to Crisco it up and spent a ridiculous amount of time working out the wrinkles and cracks. and made a giant mess... check it out....



Then I had to decide where the beer bottles would sit and if I should use 2, 3 or 4. I thought 3 looked best



Cut out 3 holes for the beer bottles to sit in (I used a round cookie cutter and it worked perfectly)



And covered the top and the holes with white fondant



can you see how SHINY the red looks? It's because of all the rubbing down I did to get the wrinkles out! Are coolers that shiny? yeah, didn't think so... Anyhow, I'm off to the gym, more later...

Beer and Cake

I started work on the 30th birthday cake... And found out that the dinner party isn't going to be as big as I thought, so I had to make some adjustments on the size of the cake. Not to mention the birthday boy doesn't like sweets (what?!)

SO, I think I'm only going to make a beer cooler cake. I had my weekly session w/ Buddy Love tonight resulting in a late start on sculpting the cake... This is all I did tonight:



I used (2) 8 inch square strawberry cakes and (1) 8 inch round funfetti cake with a creamy banana ganache filling and swiss buttercream crumb coat. Again, the birthday boy doesn't like sweets so I figured I would just pick what I liked and hopefully he would like it too. If even for just a bite.... Anyhow, because I had to make a smaller cake than I thought, I used what I had on hand- and made some creative adjustments to make it square... as you see below after I frosted it all...



Tomorrow I will cover in fondant and begin to add the details... wait for it....

back to the basics

I didn't really have anything to bake in the cake or cupcake department, so I was open to suggestions tonight. Chocolate chip cookies were shot called and I haven't made any in over a month now! That's a really long time for me- I usually keep some readily available at all times.
Here is what I came up with... and had some mishaps along the way-
which NEVER happens. I have this recipe down... but a month really was long enough to get me out of practice. I'll explain below....





I've taken years and countless BAD batches of cookies to come up with this recipe. Over the last 8 months I finally FINALLY got it right. I didn't adhere to ONE major step and that is to refrigerate the dough before scooping it. so the cookies spread way too much while baking (I didn't include a picture of those because it was shameful). I tried to adjust the butter content, then the egg content, then the buttermilk content... sigh, all to no avail. Seriously, it was because I didn't refrigerate the dough! My recipe is pretty secretive at this point so don't even bother asking. All's I'm saying is that there are some pretty strict steps to making this cookie and if you skip out on one or half a** it, they won't turn out the same. Period.

She's Pink AND Happy :)

The kiddies are going to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live! in a couple of weeks. In preparation I had some shirts made for them to wear to the show (yeah, I'm that crazy). I went on Etsy and found this talented woman to make shirts for the kids. They arrived today in the midst of the helmet making and Moochie was super stoked. Seriously- I showed her the Foofa shirt and she broke into the biggest grin! I had to put it on her right away.
Isn't this shirt awesome! The Foofa is made of felt and I had her sew sleeves so it looked like a layered shirt. She did a wonderful job!!! She also made a Toodie, Brobee and Muno- ALL of which came out amazing. I'll put the pictures up shortly. In the meantime, check her out on Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/nbarnes514

Hail to the Victors!!! Happy Birthday Joe!

Here it is! The final cake alongside a real Michigan football helmet.





And this is my favorite angle- The "Money" shot :)



SO, the face mask.... Three days was def. not long enough for it to set up. Every single one of the ropes of fondant cracked or broke while I was trying to assemble. Thankfully I made really long ropes so I had something to work with. I almost resorted to gluing the pieces back together and gluing the cross bars for stabilization. I ended up tossing one of the ropes all together and using 6 toothpicks to make it work.

I assembled it, said a prayer and a wish and sent it down to Ann Arbor for Joe's 30th birthday party. Apparently it traveled well and arrived in one piece! Yay! And some of the diners at the restaurant asked for my business card! Are you kidding? I was so pleased when I heard that... now to make some business cards....

....and now back to the show!

OK, made the marshmallow fondant and then as I was hunting down some black icing I found MORE white modeling fondant I had tucked away. argh! But, at least it was all set up and I could use it asap.

Anyhow, the cake is for #1's Godfather's 30th birthday. He played football in college and his number was 73. So as an homage I added his number to the back of the helmet:



Here is what the front looks like:



and now for the white stuff. I wanted to add a white border around the black face area so it would look like the padding on the inside of the helmet. Plus, it tidied up the lines between the black and the blue.



The other part I needed white fondant for is for the nameplate on the front of the helmet. I needed the black icing for this- to write out the word "Michigan"
I don't think I have a close up of this on purpose because it didn't look very good. Again, I should have done this with edible paint- but I just used icing and then various tools to make the lines 'cleaner'. This and the face mask (to come shortly) took FOREVER.



And here is the completed helmet. I feel sneaky showing you the final cake with the addition of the face mask without the steps in between. The face mask was hands down the hardest part of the cake.



I'll elaborate more on the next post....

More helmet-ing

I started bright and early today.. I didn't have to work at the bakery as my mentor is running a race so she wouldn't be there for me to shadow. I got to 'sleep in' on a Saturday! When did sleeping in mean 7 am?

Breakfast with the kiddies, coffee for me and I set to work. I also brought out a real helmet for some inspiration (You can spot it in the background of some pictures)

I warmed up the fondant so it was pliable and then laid it on top of the cake that had been refrigerated overnight. It was a little bit harder to shape than just a regular cake and also I was afraid I hadn't made enough so it was a little tricky.



Then I added some black dye to the navy fondant so I could cover the face area in black.



Then I set to work on the yellow fondant and began making the signature "wings" of a Michigan helmet:





Then I realized I needed some plain white fondant for the next steps and what do you know, I colored the last bit I had in yellow. Sweet. Pause while I make some more fondant.... This is the commercial break of the show, queue music...

Let the games begin....

Started work on the helmet cake tonight... So far, fairly simple. I looked up some 'how to's' on the internet this week and got the basic idea. I began working on the face mask on Wednesday night and I haven't touched since. I'm trying to let it dry out so it will be hard enough to attach tomorrow before delivery. As I learned with the Wubbzy cake, these stand alone pieces really need time to dry out. They suggested a full week on the 'how to', so hopefully 3 days is enough. Crossing my fingers.

Here is how I started:



This is a 4 layer cake- the first 3 layers are chocolate banana cake with banana flavored ganache (6 inch round) and the top layer is half of a ball cake, just plain butter/yellow cake.
I started to carve out the front...



Then I dirty frosted w/ the swiss buttercream I am so fond of :) (thank you Zingerman's!)



And then spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the fondant navy blue. Seriously, it took forever. That is my least favorite part- dying the fondant and kneading. This is what it looks like rolled out...



I think that's about it for tonight, more in the a.m. :)