He's Two and I'm Moving. It Is What It Is.

I'm already two days late. Of course I'm full of excuses. Saturday our plans quickly turned from what was expected to be a day of errand running into a delightful day of fun when we happened by the Stoddard home around lunch. Jeff was cleaning up the yard and burning the autumn leaves. We ended up having a fire and roasting marshmallows, hot dogs, apples and potatoes outside while the kids ziplined landing on the trampoline. It was a totally delightful day we all agree. Of course, that did mean that we changed our plans and I didn't do the grocery shopping.

Sunday I went to make a birthday cake for Mr. Jacob. No eggs. No cake.

Monday just didn't come together for me and I'm not doing well with the stress of moving. I did make it to the store, but couldn't force myself to bake a cake. Then Mindy called and after the kids were ready for bed we went out to Five Below and at least bought the poor kid a birthday present. They don't have the best selection for toddlers, so he's getting some amazing stuff - a blow up chair and a battery operated hampster that runs around in a ball. Yipee!

Now it is Tuesday morning and I got myself together. I got the cake batter ready. Trying a new 3D cake pan loaned to me by a friend. It was missing the clasps to keep it together, but she said, "You're an engineer, you'll figure it out." I decided I would give it a shot by wiring tying it together, using pliers to get it as tight as possible and using a cake batter that is relatively thick in the first place. You can see the amazing results right here.

Here I am. Disaster cake. Two days late. No energy or willingness to try again. I think I'll honestly frost the lump on the pan, stick a candle in it. We'll sing and open his presents and call it good for the year. Poor guy. At least he's only two so he won't even care. Hopefully he knows I love him just as much as anyone else that may have received a great cake.

UPDATE: I took that fantastic cake over to Heather's house Tuesday night. We took it apart, frosted the part that looks like Pooh's brains splattered all over the pan, took his head out of the mold, smothered it in frosting and stuck his decapitated head right smack dab in the middle. We lit two candles and sang Happy Birthday over and over while Jacob and Hazel blew out the candles over and over. I think it was a successful celebration for a couple of two year old birthday kids. We totally let them stick their fingers in it, lick, restick and lick again. Honestly, could it get much worse? And everyone was happy.

Referring back to the title of this post: He's two. I'm moving. It is what it is.

Toxic Amounts of Red

I think we may all die tomorrow. Today we injested toxic amounts of red food coloring. Or at the very least we will all pee orange. For Jacob's birthday I made a Clifford the Big Red Dog birthday cake. I used one of those dog shaped plans from Wilton. I can't decide if I'm a fan of those things yet or not. Once you slather on the base coat of frosting, all the details to help you know how to decorate the thing are covered up. Since the entire cake was going to be red, I skipped the tedious star tip method and just dumped two cans of frosting on and smoothed it out. Then I drew back the details with a medium amount of success at making it look like Clifford with a fine icing tip and black frosting. At first it looked pretty pink to me and I wasn't happy with my details. Once I walked away and came back I think it turned out okay. At least for a one year old birthday.

Coloring the icing was an adventure. I knew it would be. I did bright red Elmo for Ben's second birthday cake and used up my little standard sized bottle of red food coloring up completely that time, so I knew I was going to need a lot for this enormous cake. Sure enough. I used two cans of icing and an entire glass bottle of red food coloring (as in the size vanilla flavoring comes in or about three times as much as in those little squeeze bottles). My hands were dyed red. My spatula is pink. My mixing bowl is pink. The high chair tray is pink after he ate it. My counter was pink even after the cleaning was done. Tonight we finally got to eat the cake and I'm sure all that red is going to manifest itself soon enough.

Celebrity Connections and Cakewreck Wreckage

No secrets. I'm a Wreckie. If you don't read this blog http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/, you need to. If you want to laugh so hard you can't read through the tears in your eyes, read this blog http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/. My friend Bill, err, I mean Burton has been featured a few times now. He's AWESOME. To be truthful, unless you are a wreckie yourself you likely won't appreciate his most recent creation. But these are impressive. Bride of Frankenstein. Banana Slippage. Burton's website. Tonight I read the comments left by people all across the country. He has a serious fan club growing. There were tons of people praising his work, ladies asking if he was single and even a marriage proposal. Jenn at Cake Wrecks published a book with tons of new wreckage. Bill and his wife, Jeannie, and I have been dedicated wreckies for a long time now. We were supposed to go on a double date for my birthday to her book signing, but it got cancelled. On the new date Brian was out of town on business. They generously offered up their kids to babysit mine and off we went with one of his latest creations in hand (Lenin in a hot dog bun riding a poo wave - a combination of multiple wrecks over time). Even being the third wheel on their date I had a blast. Kind of fun to be driven by a celebrity and have to wait around for him to network. Except that Jacob was a disaster and screamed for almost 4 straight hours - not sure they will ever be willing to babysit again. It was bad. Really, really bad. Someday we'll have to do a real double date where Brian can come. They are some of the funnest people I've met here in Virginia!

Happy Birthday Maddie Mae, From Your Rotten Mommy

It isn't like I didn't make a cake for Maddie's birthday. It's just that her birthday was on the first day of Joy School. And I taught. And it was a lot of work to get all the supplies ready for the lesson that day and get the entire year organized. And I was still figuring out how to juggle kindergarten bus stop pickups and infant nap time. I made the cake. The day before her birthday in fact. I just didn't get it frosted. Or decorated. I suppose my desire to be a cake decorator has lead to high expectations of myself. I wanted to try a new medium. Fondant. She wanted a princess castle. Perfect match. Maddie's low expectations - Simple design - My zero skills with fondant.

Turns out the box of fondant scared me. It looked at me and stared at me and glared at me and taunted me to open it up and try it. I was scared. I was weak. I didn't open it. In fact it's still sitting on the counter today all the way on November 2. Long past the day I had to throw out the original birthday cake because it was covered in mold in the giant cake Tupperware that had to be decontaminated for bio hazard reasons. Long past the time I made a second cake, frosted it in plain white and shook a plastic container of colored sugar sprinkles across the top and drew a little "3" with black icing. She had been asking me and mentioned twice to other people that she didn't get a cake for her birthday. Yeah, she's old enough I can't fudge stuff anymore.

Five weeks later, she asked at a time I didn't have anything completely pressing that needed attention or the world would end. When she asked me point blank why she didn't get a cake for the third time I dropped everything and said, "Let's make your birthday cake together right now!" The smile stretched from ear to ear and maybe even a little farther. She didn't care that it wasn't her birthday. She didn't care that I was no longer under the delusion of making a gorgeous princess castle sculpted with fondant. She just knew that I loved her enough to make her a cake. She lasted all of thirty seconds in her helping, but we had cake that night. She felt like a million bucks.

Just to set the record straight before I start getting hate mail, we did celebrate her birthday on her birthday. We had a party at preschool that day when I taught. I made cup cakes to her exacting demands on decorations. We sang. She blew out candles and had fun together with 15 people in the house. Brian came home from work early so I we could go to Chuck E. Cheese and live it up. She had a blast and by the time we got back to the house it was all I could do to crawl into bed with the flu. You know you feel bad when you are standing at Chuck E. Cheese and want to lay down on the greasy bench or the filthy carpet if need be and sleep as tears start to slip down your face from the body aches. We went home, opened presents and Brian basically put the kids to bed alone. I couldn't have eaten cake that day anyway. So we did celebrate. I gave it all I had. In the end, she just really, really needed a cake. And a cake she got...five weeks late.

This is one of her favorite presents. She was elated to dress up the next day as Cinderella.

What's His Name Future Wedding Cake

I found this blog today and read on and off all day. It is all about cake decorating mistakes (and some amazing ones too). The messups are soooo funny!

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Since I posted the other day about not being able to remember Jacob's name, this cake was one that hit home. If I dont' get this thing straightened out soon, he may end up with a wedding cake like this one. I'll try harder.

Quality Cake Decorating

I've learned a few things in my time practicing my cake decorating skills. Here are my tips:

• Icing type and consistency matters. You can't use a recipe the consistency of glaze, it just won't work. The first cake I made for Brian ws a total disaster because I was hoping to find a new icing recipe we would love. It turned out to be a better glaze than a decorator icing and in the end I decorated the cake with a spoon. I scooped up a spoonful of "icing" and drizzled it into the approximate shape of a sailboat because I couldn't make anything more complicated. Also, that yummy cream cheese icing isn't the best for decorating either. Stick with the buttercream icing in the books.
• When making icing that needs to be colored, use the gel colors. If you use food coloring it is like adding water to the frosting and it gets really runny when you want a deep or vibrant color and add lots of food coloring. That is what happened with my very first cake, Elmo for Ben's 2nd birthday. I had to add so much red to make the frosting actually red instead of pink that it was a runny mess by the time I finished coloring it.
• Fill in the holes. Most of my cakes are made characters. I use a star tip to fill the colored sections to create the characters. When I am slow and meticulous, filling in all the white space between stars it looks great. In the sections where my hand is getting tired or my patience is growing thin I start to rush and then there are white spots of base frosting showing beneath. It really doesn make a big difference in the end presentation. I should always work slowly.
• Along that same vein, always enough time to do it right. If I'm rushed and don't have enough time to do the cake right, I won't be happy with it. I'll skimp on the time I need to color the icing just the right shade and may run out of a color because I didn't mix enough, then matching it is a joke, etc.
• When doing features that need to be distinguished from each other but are in the same color (say a characters face and neck), put a black icing line on the base frosting (forming a chin), then fill with stars tightly around the line. It will leave a gently line marking the feature but won't be so bold as to be overpowering.
• Buy the right tools. I seriously believe that the reason more people don't decorate cakes is that they don't want to do all the frosting color changes in the icing bags. So for less that $20 you can get minimally equipped to decorate cakes. Invest the money. Buy a bunch of star tips, couplers and plastic frosting bags. I now make my icing without milk, just water, then it can keep on the shelf for a long time. I mix a color, fill a bag and use it. Then I keep a large tupperware of all the frosting colors I have already made. Next time I need red, it's ready to go. Saves me a zillion hours or mixing and lots of dish washing! There, cake decoration just got really easy.
• Finally, if you make the cake ahead of time and freeze it, make sure you thaw the cake before you serve it. For Maddie's first birthday I made a cute duck cake ahead of time and had it in the freezer. Brian's parents were visiting and it was bedtime before I remembered the cake. I grabbed it out of the freezer and we tried to let her destroy the cake as most 1 year olds get the priviledge of doing. It was frozen solid. She basically got to scrap the top layer of frosting off but was unable to penetrate the icy layers of yummy cake. Oops. Oh well, it does make for a good story, just not a good video.

My cake decorating schedule:

1. Day 1 - bake cake, level, frost middle if two layer cake, put in freezer because you're too lazy to finish the base frosting layer or because you ran out of time to do it
2. Day 2 - (not necessarily the next day, just day 2 of working on the cake since I usually take a week to do a cake) frost the base layer of the cake, try to make it really smooth and pretty then throw back in the freezer because you ran out of time again
3. Day 3 - (again, just the third day of working) take the cake out of freezer the day before you need it completed, let cake thaw, moisture will collect on top of cake because of the humidity so let it evaporate away or it will look wet and shiny
4. Day 4 - (day the cake is needed, best to start with just enough time to complete the project under ideal circumstances, so that when something goes wrong, as it always does, you are rushed and crazy trying to finish it just in time), google the image you want to put on the cake, size image to fit cake, print two copies of the picture, cut the outline of the image as well as any main components of the picture, lay paper on cake and trace shape and main features with toothpick, add any other detail with toothpick tracing, color icing, fill bags with colored icing, fill each section with the star tip and proper color, take pictures, cut into pieces, add a side of ice cream and ENJOY!!

Mommy Time Out

I am loosing any ability to be patient right now and Maddie has decided that now is just the prefect time to test my every limit. Ugh. I was asked to make the baby shower cake for a friend. The cake was made and ready to move to the cake board. I trimmed the board to the perfect size and taped the tin foil on top when Brian called. Maddie had been given instruction to not touch anything because Brian needed an account number right then. Maddie was distracted when I ran upstairs. I had no sooner got the folder open when I heard Ben yelling, "Mom! Maddie is ruining the cake!" I ran back down the stairs yelling to stop touching it. When I rounded the corner and saw her fingers shoved into the cake, I lost it and screamed something like, "How can you be so stupid! I hate you when you do this crap! Why can't you just listen to me and leave my stuff alone?" I was so mad! Maddie got put in time out, screaming and crying. A two year old gets two minutes of time out, right? I removed myself from the situation, stood against the wall in the other room breathing deeply. Lets just say it took all the self control and good fibers of my character to go finish the time out, tell her I loved her and give a hug. Two minutes was NOT long enough to cool off for me. It was so hard to not just throw her in her room for an hour. Maddie's time out ended, she apologized to me, then I gritted my teeth and apologized to her for saying mean words and told her I loved her. Then I stayed in the time out spot after she was done. Let's face it I earned it. After a minute she actually noticed I was in time out and thought it was funny. Her smile was from ear to ear. She kept asking me, "Mommy go to time out today?" "Yes," was all I could say. Ben thought is was cool too. I couldn't help wishing that if a 2 yr old gets 2 minutes, why couldn't I have 30 minutes? I'd love 30 minutes alone...I'd be bad more often if I could guarantee some alone time. On to a new, fresh, clean slate on a different day. I will do better. I will maintain my composure. I will be stronger than my impulsive, exhausted emotions. The cake board was repaired, the cake was fixed with frosting and no one ever knew the difference. Sorry if you were at the shower and now know where your cake has been. It did turn out pretty cute though.

UPDATE: I know Maddie wouldn't remember me freaking out that day when she is an adult. She's young. The memory will fade eventually. Three days later though, we were snuggling on the couch and she said, with a smile, "I always mess up your stuff." Cute little grin and a snuggle. Oh well. She'll forget over time...right?? I've done better the last few days.

Baby Cakes...Stumped

Anyone have a picture of a cute baby cake design idea I can decorate for a baby shower this Saturday? I'm stumped. It's a girl and I don't do fondant...yet... :)