Feelin' buggy!

Yesterday was the big cake delivery day. Everything went much better than I was anticipating, which is always nice. I did have a few bumps along the road, but it all turned out great in the end. I really had a great time planning and executing these cakes. It did get pretty stressful I must admit. When I have made cakes for my kids or my sister's kids, I've always known if things totally flopped I could just run to Walmart or something and pick a bakery cake up, but this time I would ruin poor little Camrie's 1st Birthday! I just kept reminding myself to relax and enjoy the process, this is something I love doing.
There has been a lot of preparation beforehand, mostly because I wanted to try some new recipes. I thought it was cheesy that I just use a cake mix, so I attempted to make a Perfect White Cake. I have never used a filling in a cake before and I also wanted to try some new frosting recipes. I made three cakes, a white with strawberry cream cheese filling, a chocolate with chocolate cream cheese filling, and a small white cake for the baby. I tried a Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a Crusting Buttercream Frosting, a Creamy Chocolate Frosting, a Cheesecake Mousse Filling, a Chocolate Filling from another cake recipe, and then I invented my own fillings! :)
First off, the Swiss Meringue was too buttery for me, and I had read that because they are so buttery, they will get super soft when left at room temp. I knew I wanted this frosting for the cake on the bottom, so not a good match. It had a very smooth velvety texture, but it really had a strong butter flavor that I am not sure I enjoy.
The Crusting Buttercream is awesome!! I love the texture and the flavor is mild and wonderful. I will be using this recipe for all my future cakes!
The Creamy Chocolate Frosting is also exactly what it says, creamy and absolutely delicious. I seriously could have sat down with a spoon and eaten the entire batch without cake, but I love frosting.
The Cheesecake Mousse is just what it says, a mousse. It tasted delicious and I will use it for crepe filling in the future, but it was just too soft for the bottom of my cake and the cheesecake flavor wasn't quite strong enough for me. It really is delicious though.
The Chocolate filling is awesome on the cake it belongs to, but was not quite firm enough for my layer cake.
So Saturday I worked on the chocolate frosting, the cheesecake filling and the cake from scratch. I made a little 8 in round and discovered the cake tasted delicious fresh from the oven, but after being chilled it was a bit dry and crumbly. Still good, but not that good. Sydni enjoyed the frosting! I also made the Easy Marshmallow Fondant and kneaded in the red coloring in one half batch. I made two other batches and left them white to cover the cakes. I also made the foam board stands for the cakes. I cut out a leaf shape and covered it with green craft paper for the baby's cake. The other two were round, but the big one was also edged in green paper and I purchased a white doily for the cake to rest on.
Monday afternoon I started baking the cakes from the box and mixing up the fillings and frostings. I cleaned my Kitchenaid mixer more times than I ever want to again!!! Monday night I tweaked some recipes to get my filling recipes, unfortunately the strawberry cheese cake was still too soft. But all the cakes assembled easily.
Here is a picture of the cakes all torted, filled and iced waiting for their fondant covers. I used the Viva paper towel method to smooth the icing. Love it!!!


Later that night I covered the cakes and started working on the lady bugs. That's when I discovered the fondant completely changed texture because of the red coloring. I had also read about this problem online and had used more powdered sugar and some corn syrup to compensate, but it still didn't work. So Plan B- make the bugs out of white fondant and paint them. I stayed up until 2:30 forming all my little buggies. I gave them overnight, or actually a few hours to dry. I got up at 8 and started painting. Here they are all painted and drying by an open window.

The white swirly thing was going to be the antanae of the little lady bug cake, but the fondant didn't dry so I ended up making them out of royal icing. Then came the really fun part, decorating! I had a lot of fun. I don't think I'm very good at writing with icing, but I really like Camrie's name. I also like the lady bug's "trails." Here are a few pictures- one when they are in the fridge right after they were finished and a few I snapped right before I delivered them. I didn't have time to take any more.
I really hope my friend took more pictures! She is a scrapbooker, so I'm sure she did. Transporting the cakes was really scary! I thought I'd be taking them to her house which is right around the corner, but then found out she was having the party at her MIL's house about 5 min away. Doesn't seem that far right? They are doing construction on the road I thought I'd need to turn on and we live in the foot hills. I was scared! Luckily my neighbor came over and knew some back roads I could take and even offered to come with me to help make the delivery. Julia came with us to hold the third cake. My friend had the big cake on her lap and held the little lady bug above it. Poor thing! She's so sweet to help!! Would you believe we got there incident free. Yeah!! So how do you like my lady bug cakes?