Caketastrophe

Over the years, I've had a couple of cake mishaps. One was because I put the cake in a cake carrier as soon as I finished it without letting it crust over and then delivered it to work the next morning (an hour drive). The border on the top of the cake started falling off. The girl I made it for (one of my best customers) took it in stride and ate the thing anyway. She's a cake nut, so the appearance wasn't a huge issue to her. There was another one where someone requested that I put sliced strawberries in the middle of the cake layers. I liked this idea, but as an experiment, it needed some refining. Strawberries weep, and in the presence of sugar, they weep a lot. Even though I put a good layer of icing between the strawberries and the edge of the cake, they started weeping out the side in places. There were also berries on top that I thought I could contain with a thick border of icing on the top. They pulled out so much juice that they started flooding over the sides. Live and learn. In fact, I need to try that one again.

This time, I think I made several mistakes. It happens to the best of us. This cake was to be one of the easier ones I've done in quite some time. A simple white cake with white icing and a few letters on top. No problem.

I got the request on Thursday to do a cake Thursday night so a friend could give it to his son on Saturday. Since I would only see them at work, I had to do the cake Thursday night so I could deliver it Friday. No problem...

First mistake was that I changed the way that I greased the cake pans so the cake wouldn't stick. The classic way is to use shortening and put a thin layer all over the pan. Follow that up with a dusting of flour, tap out the pan and viola, non-stick. I recently looked at a Cake Doctor book which recommended just using non-stick cooking spray on the pan and then following that up with flour. It works well, but caused some problems. Now, I used this technique on the X-Box 360 cake the week before and it worked great. However, that cake was iced and covered with fondant. It also didn't have to travel. When you use this technique, you end up with a little more flour on the outside surface of the cake. Maybe you can brush some of it off, but it still makes a rather dusty surface. This was the start of my problem.

Next, I put just a little more water in the icing than I usually do because I wanted it a little softer for spreading. I'm not sure this was a major issue, because wetter icing should stick better and moisten the surface. However, it doesn't firm up as much and takes longer to dry out or crust over. I had a heck of a time putting the top border on the cake. The bottom one wasn't an issue, but the top one gave me grief. At first, I chalked it up to being out of practice since I haven't been doing a lot of cakes lately. After being upset with the result a third time, I started thinking that it wasn't my technique and that the icing was a little thinner than normal. I was exceedingly careful the fourth time I put the top border on to make sure that nothing leaned over the sides. The problem was that the thinner icing would pull on anything leaning over the side of the cake and start to droop, so I made sure that wouldn't happen. I finally got it right and left it to dry.

Third problem, and the one I should know better. Since it was a friend and I didn't have time to go get a cake box, I used a cake carrier. Now, I did let the cake sit out for a couple of hours before putting the top on, but it apparently wasn't enough. The problem with a cake carrier is that they are air tight. It doesn't let the moisture out and allow the icing to firm up well. The moisture inside the carrier will soften the icing. I thought that I had let it dry out enough that it wouldn't be a problem. Not so.

The icing fell off of one whole side of the cake. I started getting a sick feeling when I looked over at it about half way to work. When I got to the office, I kept looking at it as I tooled around the office before I figured out what I could do. I managed to use the icing that fell off to fix the cake and make it presentable. I suspect that the icing fell off because of the dusty outside of the cake's surface, but that didn't really matter to me at that point. I used a plastic knife (not the best cake decorating tool) to pull up and smooth over the icing from the sides. Since I didn't have a piping bag handy, the top border had to go. The result was presentable, but not very pretty to me.

I told my friend what happened and not to worry about paying me for it, or he could take me to lunch since it wasn't up to par with my normal work. He paid me anyway, darn it.

In case you are wondering what it on top of the cake, it stands for lean six sigma. It's a process of continuous quality improvement that some companies use. I've working at companies which have completely ruined six sigma processes, so I'm not a terribly big fan. My friend's son had landed a job as a quality engineer recently, and this was to celebrate that new job.

You would think that the story is finished there. Nope. Devil cake wasn't done yet. I let the cake sit out all day to make sure that the icing would dry out completely an there wouldn't be any more issues. I even told him to do the same the following day prior to taking it to wherever they were going to celebrate. He took the cake and put it in the car for his drive home (also over an hour). Our Texas summers are hot, very hot. The car was warm, and he put it on the floor. The heat softened the icing and it started to fall off again! He said he was able to fix it well enough when he got home and they finished the whole thing off over the weekend. The top never had an issue, only the sides. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it wasn't, but that cake as nothing but ptoblems from start to finish. Sadly, it was one of the easier ones that I've done in quite some time. In fact, this cake was so boring that I wasn't even going to take pictures of it or write about it. Maybe the cake took offense to that and decided to get even...

X-Box 360

I received a call from a friend and neighbor asking if I could do a cake for the weekend coming up. It was already Tuesday, but I had already planned on taking Friday off to go see Transformers 3 with my son, so I figured I could whip up a cake for Saturday. She said that the daughter of her mother's friend (follow that one?) made a cake that looked like an X-Box 360, but when she say the preview picture of the finished cake, she just couldn't give it to him. I told her I could do one for her. She brought over pictures as examples of what she wanted and a picture of the cake that was not to see the light of day. She was right, it looked really bad. Here is the picture:

The picture isn't the best quality because it is a scanned copy of a printed version of the picture. That's ok, the cake isn't of very good quality either. Can you imagine someone charging $100 for that? I assured her that I could do one that would make her proud to give it to him. She wanted the black X-Box 360, which I informed her could be a problem. Too much dye could really wreck the flavor of a cake. The agreed that the white would be ok, but my wife convinced me to at least try the black to see if it was bad before giving up on it. I decided I would make chocolate marshmallow fondant and then dye that to see if I could get black a little easier. It worked out very well. The fondant tasted fine. They wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate icing underneath. I had happened to make a couple of cakes earlier in the week to let a bride and groom try them for a groom's cake I plan to do later in the summer. I tried a new chocolate cake recipe that turned out excellent. The chocolate icing is decadent, because it is made with butter, cream, and lots of cocoa. Evil stuff.
I hopped on-line and found a picture of the newer X-Box and controller, since she wanted the controller as well. I started the cake in the early afternoon on Friday and worked through the evening. I did the finishing touches the next morning. Some of the details don't show up since they are carved into the black face of the cake. They're invisible unless you're in person and the light is hitting it just so. I did have to mix up a little butter cream icing to use as "glue" for some of the components and for the green power indicator. I added the vent holes and other parts that I could see in the pictures of the real unit I found. I should have probably walked down the street and looked at the real unit for more detail, but I figured the pictures were enough.

The cake was a hit at the party. The birthday boy loved it. A few of the more amusing moments are when people would try to push it out of the way to set something down because they thought it was a real unit, only to be shocked when they really looked at it and realized it wasn't a real unit. One of the kids tried to grab the controller because he wanted to go play the real X-Box and nobody would let him. When his fingers sunk into the icing, he figured out real quick that it wasn't real. I wouldn't say it was totally life-like, but it was fairly close. Close enough to fool people if they weren't paying close attention. Success.
This one wasn't without its challenges though. I realized that adding that much dye to the marshmallow fondant dried it out considerably. I would have thought the opposite. When I was kneading the fondant, I kept adding more and more water to make it more pliable and less likely to crack. I finally got it rolled out nice and smooth and thought that it was soft enough to put on the cake. It was still a little dry, so there were some small cracks at the corners after it was put on the cake. Nothing catastrophic, but it still bothered me. She I did the controller, I tried adding a little shortening to the mix, and that did the trick. The fondant was much easier to work with then. I'll remember that for the future. I had some white fondant left over from the bride and groom earlier in the week that I tinted to make everything that wasn't black. Luckily, I kept the extra fondant, because it came in handy later in the week for this one.

Murder Mystery

If you have never had or been to a birthday party with a themed activity, I highly recommend it. It's a good time. I was invited to a murder mystery party with a wetern theme. The murder was to take place during a poker tournament. I was asked to make the cake for the party, with little guidance on what to put on it. What you see below is what I came up with.

The wanted poster, playing cards, and poker chips are fondant. The rest is white icing, tinted to whatever color I needed. Several ideas came to mind. One was the 5 aces, indicating that someone was murdered because they were cheating. The poker chips were obvious, and I wanted a wanted poster with a silhouette of someone with a cowboy hat. The border of the cake was meant to look a little like rope. I had another idea of taking the rope and bringing it into the center of the cake and framing the bad guy's face with a noose, but I thought that would be too busy. Another idea that one of my friends offered to me was to do a clue board. I almost went with that idea and made the rooms into the old west buldings, and maybe put a gun, knife and noose on the cake. I decided I liked the wanted poster idea better, so went with it. I did keep the knife idea though, as you can see from the picture below. The first picture above was how the cake looked when I left the house. When I got to the party, I inserted the knife into the picture. The knife was a tongue depressor covered in fondant. A little gel food coloring completed the blood splatter effect. I didn't want the knife falling over on the car ride over, so I waited until I got there to indert it. The cake was a hit at the party.

Cross

This cake was requested by the lady who received the Clarinda birthday cake. Oh wait, that would be Clarinda. She has a bible study group and they wanted a cross cake for their evening group to eat during their meeting. They had definite ideas about what they wanted on the cake, which I usually like. I offered up some decorating ideas to make it look more impressive. They wanted the glitter and wording on top, along with the scalloped border and the beads on the top. I offered to put lace on the sides, but as I started decorating the cake, I thought that would make it look a little gaudy, so I left that part off. I thought it turned out pretty well without it. To get the wording to cross in the middle, I had to slant the words a little. It worked out, but in retrospect, I should have slanted the "Lords" from low to high so it wouldn't look like it was coming down from the "King" on the top part of the cross. Oh well. They liked it, and that's all that really mattters.

Birthday (Fab-like)

I never thought I would get so much play out of such a simple design. I didn't even come up with the original idea, but people sure have requested this one a lot. This cake was for a birthday. Can you guess what the birthday girl's name was? The pink is still the marshmallow fondant, and the cake and icing are both the wedding cake recipe with a hint of almond. This time, the fondant turned out perfect. There are times when you make it where it is too dry or too hard, but this one rolled out and came out perfect. Each of the silver edible beads is put on with a pair of tweezers for these cakes. It takes a little while, but I like the effect.

Mini Fab cake

Here is another one of the "Fab" cakes. I got a kick out of this one though. A co-worker wanted a smaller version of the Fab cake so she could take it with her on a plane to New York City to visit her daughter. The cake was a six inch cake, that came to just under eight inches once all decorated. I found her a small box to carry it in as well. She said it made it to New York without any damage and they had a little champagne party with it. I just thought it was funny that she was taking a Sex in the City cake from Houston to New York.

Jello Shots!

My wife found an Instructable that took fruit and made jello shots using the rind instead of those little plastic cups. She posted the picture she found on Facebook and my brother told her that he wanted them for his daughter's graduation party. Mind you, it was his high school daughter's graduation party. However, the event was mostly for the family and friends, so there were to be mostly adults at the event.

Looking at the above picture, we had several different types of shots available. They are:
Strawberries filled with strawberry jello with creme de banana liquer (Awesome!)
Orange rinds with orange jello and orange rum
Lemon rind with lemon jello and Absolut Citron vodka
Lime rind with lime jello and tequilla(funny story behind this one)
Cucumber slices with watermelon jello and Absolut Currant vodka

The orange, lemon, and strawberries were my favorites. The strawberries disappeared first. To make the citrus ones, you have to cut the fruit in half, clean out the flesh and fill the little bowls with the jello mixture. Once they set up, I turned them over and used an electric knife to cut them into wedges. I tried other knives first, but they didn't cut well enough. The electric knife cut through them like butter. We used the flesh from the lemons and limes in smoothies, to there was no waste. Same for the strawberries. The lime flesh got tossed, because I don't have much use for lime. I don't recommend the limes because they are such a royal pain to clean out. It just isn't worth the effort. As for the limes, I wanted to make margarita-type jello shots. Combing through the liquor cabinet, we didn't have any tequilla. I called a neighbor who I figured would have some and said that I was making a recipe and that I needed to borrow a cup of tequilla. Believe it or not, I don't think they thought I was serious. Once I didn't break out into some sort of joke, they realized I was serious and that I realy did want tequilla. In return, I gave them a couple of each type of shot to try. I think it was a fair trade.

The cucumbers were fairly easy. I peeled the cucumbers and scooped out the seeds. I then filled the little boats with the jello mixture and let it set. After that, I sliced them and they looked like little watermelon halves.
The strawberries were fairly challenging. It's tough to scoop them out and not pierce the sides, but still allow enough room to provide enough jello to be of any use. You also have to slice a little bit off of the tip of the strawberry so it will sit up straight. If you do that, many of them are fairly hollow, so you'll have a hole in the bottom. If that happens, all of the jello will leak out. We found that out the hard way. I took some of the strawberry debris from cleaning them out and stuffed it in the bottom to plug the hole. That worked well enough. Another idea is to dip the bottom of the strawberry in chocolate before filling them with jello. Mmmm...

PFGT Summer Camp Expo

I am a board member for the Humble Parents for Gifted and Talented (PFGT) organization. At the time of this event, I was just an active memnber of the organization. One of the big activities we offer each year is the summer camp expo where local businesses and schools come together to present activities for kids to do during the summer. I volunteered to make thank you packages for each of the people volunteering their time to come and present their activities at the expo. I decided to put several things into a bag. I wanted to do a cupcake, but the problem with that is transport. What I found was a mug gift box at the local party store. It was a little larger than I needed, but I put a piece of tissue paper in the bottom of the box to stabilize the cupcake and help fill the box.



A little edible glitter on the top of the cupcake, and it was a nice little surprise when you opened the box. The cupcake was my white wedding cake recipe with white icing.

Next were some greek cookies that I made from my grandmother's recipe. I've been eating these as long as I can remember. They're like a shortbread cookie with cinnamon rolled into layers. I make mine into many thin layers instead of just a few thick layers like the recipe suggests. I like the extra cinnamon and the texture more. They are similar to biscotti, but won't break your teeth. One recipe of the cookies was more than enough for all of the attendees to get about a half dozen cookies.

The above image is of my oatmeal cranberry cookies. These are another one of my favorites. The family loves them, so when I make them, they go quickly. I made several batches for this event so each person could get several cookies.

This picture was the top view of the cookies and cupcake box in the gift bags. Tissue paper was put over the top of it all to finish it off and make it more presentable.

Here are all of the bags filled and ready to go. There were 24 bags in all. I didn't keep a close tally of the expense, because this was my addition to the event and I didn't ask for payment. I think the cost probably came to around $100. Not too bad considering there were 24 bags full of goodies.