Rehearsal Dinner Cake

I've mentioned before that I work very part-time at Provisions, a fantastic little bakery/cafe in Pelham, NY. (For local Westchester readers, it just won "Best Prepared Foods South" in Westchester Magazine's Best Of 2008 awards). The owner, Nannette Conners, received a request a couple of weeks ago from a soon-to-be bride who wanted a cake that recreated the night she and her now-fiancee got engaged. They were on a futon and both were wearing casual clothes (she was in black and white checked pajama pants - a detail that you'll see later in the photos).

I made the people (I still don't know their names, so I've been calling them Ken and Barbie) out of gumpaste, something I've never done before but thought it would be fun to try. It was fun, but I decided almost at the beginning that they DEFINITELY were going to be cartoony-looking people, rather than trying to replicate them exactly.

In addition to the checked pj pants, she (Barbie) gave us specifics -- he (Ken) was wearing a blue shirt and a backwards baseball cap, she wore a pink t-shirt and had on big silver hoop earrings, AND there was a leopard print pillow on the couch next to her.

My favorite part about Barbie was the hair. I used a garlic press to make it, but gumpaste is incredibly sticky and completely gummed up the press the first couple times I used it. The bangs came together perfectly, and there was actually some resemblance!

The next day I transported Barbie and Ken in a shoe box to the bakery where I worked with Nanette to figure out how to make the cake. Turned out it was easy enough. We stacked two sheet cakes, cut it in half, and cut one of the pieces in half again. It looked a little top heavy, so I took of one layer and we had the dimensions we were looking for. The complete perfectionist side of me wanted to spend the next four hours making the futon look as realistic as possible, but I had to move on!

My first thought with the checked pants was to use black food coloring (liquid food coloring watered down with vodka works best) to paint black dots on the pants but this time the perfectionist side of me won out and I hand painted the checks on the pants. In the future I'd probably just do the dots because that was easily the longest process of the whole projected!

Two minutes before closing time I put Ken and Barbie on the couch of a trial run - they looked pretty good, and I hear the bride was happy. I'm looking forward to doing more of these - anyone need a gumpaste likeness of themselves?

Ken, without a hat or hair

Barbie, including silver hoop earrings

Painting Barbie's pants

Cutting the cake, a little too top heavy

The finished cake!

Gabe's snake cake

I've had this post sitting in my drafts file for a week and I'm finally getting it together to post. Gabe turned 5 at the end of June and requested a snake cake -- specifically, one that "looked like a giraffe." I had no idea how I was going to make a cake big enough to feed the hoards of kids at his party (40+) with just one snake (and a 13" x 17" board), so decided late the night before to add a bottom layer made out of two 9x9 cakes. Cake was chocolate with vanilla bean buttercream (pretty much the only buttercream I'm making these days - it's that good!). To make the snake I made 4 6" layers and split each one. Then assembeled three cakes with three layers each, all spackled together with buttercream. Cut a hole in the middle of them and then sliced in half sideways and pieced it together. I used the remaining 2 layers to cut out the head and the tail (the remainder of the cake is still in my freezer, where it's slowly being chipped away by Doug and I).

The scales are made out of gumpaste which I cut into diamond shapes a couple of days before. Bad move - they were way too hard to bend on the cake, so I placed them on the night before and by morning had melted enough to smoosh them on. Finally, my overly warm kitchen is good for something! Last thing - see the nose? I didn't even think about snake's having noses until my 5yr old told me. Learning new things every day!

Bottom layer

One of three three-layered 6" cakes

Piecing the snake together

Snake on a cake (this one is really blurry for some reason, not sure why)

Adding the head and the tail

Frosted snake

Pointy scales

The finished cake, taken by Doug, in our attic studio

Jesse's cake (or Why We Need Central Air IMMEDIATELY!)

This weekend I made a Cookie Monster cake for Jesse's 1st birthday. No problem - I knew exactly how I was going to make it and how I'd decorate it. What I didn't plan on (though I should have) was 80 degree temperatures in my kitchen Saturday night and Sunday. Made the frosting on Saturday night - (fortunately, the vanilla bean cakes were already made and tucked safely away in the freezer) and it immediately turned to blue soup (was too tired and cranky, or I would have taken step by step photos.)

It spent the night in the fridge, and I managed to get a crumb coat on the layers before the kitchen got too hot (was about 74 at the time). My first thought was to decorate the cake with the grass tip, which ends up looking like fur - similar to the elmo cupcakes and lion's mane. The frosting was WAY too melty at that point and turned into a blue blob on the cake, so I improvised and made peaks by pressing with my small offset. That worked great for the top, but when I tried pipe out frosting on the sides, it totally started sliding down. I moved into the living room and the finished the cake (cursing under and over my breath the whole time), and managed to spackel this together.

Hi Shelteriffic Readers!

I was beyond thrilled when I saw that one of my favorite blogs, Shelteriffic, mentioned this blog in a weekly round-up last week. I've been using this blog primarily as a dumping ground/journal for things I've baked, as a way to remind myself what I liked and didn't like about each project. Nice to see that others might appreciate it - it's definitely encouraged me to post more frequently, and maybe even branch out a bit. To start including the "and then some" part of my tag line. Watch this space!!!

Max and Stella's cake

Max turned 5 on June 8 and one of his best friends Stella turns 5 on the 21st, so we decided to have a joint b-day party (I should add they go to school together and have almost all of the same friends.) Maxie's cake ideas ran the gamut from subway car, to race car, to Amtrak train, to (well, I guess his ideas weren't that broad!) Finally he decided on a racetrack cake, which just so happens to be the same cake he wanted last year, for his 4th birthday. Perfect! Again with the cobbler's children thing, I didn't have a ton of time to get things together and make a new completely original cake, so I was very happy.

Same size - two 9-inch layer cakes, chocolate and vanilla bean, with chocolate buttercream filling, outside was colored vanilla bean frosting and chocolate cookies for the dirt. Last years cake had green coconut for grass, which people loved, but I thought it made the whole thing look like a monster so I decided black/white stripes fit in better.

I think someone has photos of the cake in action, with flags, candles, etc, and I'll post them when I get them.

Stella's name was on the other side, also in orange.

The 9-inch layers pieced together

crumb coat - looks a little bit like boobs, I think

Lining up the circles