My first wedding cake!

The wedding cake is finished. Right now it is hopefully being eaten and enjoyed by all the wedding guests. The cake was massive, just massive. To me anyway. I'm sure professional bakers would not think anything of it, but it was massive to me. It was three tiers, 16"-12"-8", the largest cake I had made to date was a 10" diameter. I knew 16" was going to be a big cake, but honestly I did not appreciate how large that actually is. I was petrified when the pan came in the mail. My cake decorating friend in Texas reassured me that all would be just fine, it wasn't going to be as bad as I was anticipating. Oh how I wish that had been the case! Let just say I had a very difficult time with this one. In the end it all turned out and they were very happy with the cake. I was in such a hurry trying to get it there that I left my camera (and the spatula I use to transfer tiers yikes!! one of the many difficulties) at home. I am going to ask the bride if I can possibly get a picture from her. I hope they took one!

Two cakes down, one wedding to go!



I have been busy making more cakes this month. And I'm not even close to being finished for the month! I still have hubby's cake on Sunday, my FIL on the 22nd and then the the wedding cake on the 24th. Good thing I don't live close to my Mom or I'd be doing another for her on the the 23rd. Actually there is a good chance hubby is just going to get a pie (which he'd prefer anyway), but I do want to make my FIL's because I have the perfect idea!! And it's simple to make. I hope...

Anyway, on to the cakes. First up is the cake I made for a baby boy's 1st birthday. I really think these may be my favorite cakes to make! The client wanted a bath time theme, maybe something to do with rubber duckies. She wanted a 10" and an 8" tiered cake. One layer with chocolate cake and chocolate mousse filling and the other to be chocolate cake with bavarian creme filling. Yum yum! This is the finished product.



I also took close up pictures of the little duck and bubbles. Everything you see is edible.

This baby is made of Rice Krispy treats covered in modeling chocolate. He is so tasty! The ducks are made of gumpaste with chocolate bills. The bubbles are gumpaste as well.


This second cake is a cake I have been wanting to make for a very long time now. I actually made the royal icing tiara back in April, but my neighbor never had a party for her daughter. I ended up not really having the time I would have liked to spend on this cake, but it still turned out pretty cute. It is 8" and 6" tiers, one is lemon with lemon curd filling and the top is chocolate with chocolate mousse. Not the best of photos, but I was in a huge hurry!! Better luck next time.

Today I am off to Costco to get the ingredients to start baking the wedding cake. School starts Tuesday here, so I also have some school shopping left to do. Not to mention hubby's birthday. I don't think I will be posting or reading much of anything for at least a week, so I hope you all have a good one!

Good Mail Girls

I joined Melissa's "Good Mail Girls" group thinking it would be a great way to get over my hang up about actually putting something in the mail. I am seriously post0ffice impaired. It's really not that far from my house, the lines have never been too unbearably long, but for some reason unless I am under a major deadline I just can't seem to make it there. I purchased little goodies and have them sitting in envelopes all ready to go, well, they were until Julia ate the candy out of them. If I had mailed them right away it would not have been a problem. This obviously is not going to cure my problem, so after I send things off, I am going to ask Melissa to remove me from the group!

I thought I'd share pictures of goodies I have received:

First off, Jessica sent my yummy treats.



Then Melissa sent beautiful beaded earrings and a bracelet.



Then Andrea sent her fun summer picks.



Much to my shock Jessica, who obviously has no problem getting to the post office, sent ANOTHER cute set of goodies.



They sent fun things! I'm really hoping to get mine off in the mail by the end of the week before things get too crazy. Frankly, it's amazing I'm posting again so soon! I figured I could at least do this!!! Wish me luck!

Shayla tagged me, so here goes. I don't know that I really enjoyed this exercise. It was more work than my poor brain could handle at the moment. It's good to have something quick to post though!

Yourself: caring

Your partner: faithful

Your hair: ponytail

Your mother: busy

Your father: patient

Your favorite item: philosphy "hope in a tube"

Your dream last night: pregnancy (I'm blaming this one on you, Jenny!!)

Your favorite drink: water

Your dream car: Jeep

Dream home: owned

The room you are in: front

Your fear: alone

Where you want to be in 10 years:

Who you hung out with last night: family

You're not: confident

One of your wish list items: home

The last thing you did: dishwasher

You are wearing: clothes

Your favorite weather: overcast

Your favorite book: many

Last thing you ate: cracker

Your life: blessed

Your mood: tired

Your best friend: Ja

What are you thinking about right now: cake

Your car: van

What are you doing at the moment: repairing

Relationship status: eternity

What is on your t.v: off

When is the last time you laughed: morning

I'm tagging, who's left?? Julie? Kristie? If you want to??

10 Wonderful Years!

Yesterday was my 10th Wedding Anniversary. I don't feel that old. Some days it doesn't feel like that much time has passed. Much of the time it feels like I have known my husband all my life and that we have always been together. It's just how it is supposed to be.


My life has not gone the way I thought it would. If you had asked the girl in that picture where she thought she would be in 10 years, she'd probably told you living in the Northwest a block away from one of Jason's brothers, with four kids, the white picket fence, the 9-5 job, blissfully happy.



I may not be where I thought I would be, or have the things I thought I would by now, but I don't think I could be happier with my marriage or family. I didn't realize then that I would be able to love my husband more than I did that day. How could it possibly grow any bigger or deeper? I still feel that thrill of excitement when he walks through the door. I still have not tired of staring into his eyes, holding his hand, just being by him. He still makes me laugh. He still makes me feel cherished. I know my happiness means more to him than anything. What more could anyone possibly want?



We have two beautiful daughters. They have brought so much love and richness to our lives. I will never forget watching Jason hold them for the first time. I will never forget just laughing with joy the day our first daughter was born and the indescribable feeling of completeness the day our second daughter was born.



Where do I see myself in 5 more or 10 more years? I really don't know, but as long as I have Jason and my girls, I don't really care.

Happy Anniversary Ja!

Two posts in one day, the world has gone mad!

I guess it's not technically the same day since it's 12:12 as I type. I just had to share the exciting news! I'm doing a wedding cake next month!! Yeah!

People keep asking me for business cards and web addresses etc, and I think I'm really going to take the plunge. This may actually be a worthwhile business for me, and I need your help. I cannot think of business name. Julia wants me to be "Queen of Cakes" I wanted "Sweet Nothings" but it's taken, Jason suggested "Ivey Icings." Really people, I NEED HELP!!! Please leave any and all suggestions. And please excuse my overuse of exclamation points. If I were a superhero, that would be my fatal flaw. And the fact that I can no longer run even a mile... woe is me!

Cake Madness!!!

I honestly don't know how this has happened, but I have been making cakes like a madwoman lately. My house and children are complete disasters because of it. Don't get me wrong, I love making all these cakes, but it's really beginning to take it's toll. I am definitely feeling the need to get this business up and running as well. People keep asking for business cards and web address and all I can say is, "I thought this was a hobby..."

On to the cakes! First up is the "Luau Theme Cake." This one was such a learning experience for me. Aren't they all though? :) I had never made gumpaste flowers before, and had ordered a book and cutters from Nicholas Lodge to help teach me what to do. Unfortunately for me, they were closed over the 3rd & 4th of July, so my order did not make it in time. Wouldn't you know it arrived the day after I made my flowers.


What I ended up doing was using a 6 petal cutter I already own, and cut out the extra petal and then just shaped it the best I could. They are not perfect or anatomically correct, but it was for a 5-yr-old's birthday, not the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show.


The purple flowers are supposed to be a hibiscus. I think they look nice, but they are not "correct."


The pink and white and the yellow flowers are plumerias. These are the flowers you often see in hawaiian jewelry (I have a ring myself) and in leis. I LOVE them!


The hula dancer is a chocolate figure of course. It was trickier working with a darker skin tone. I was not expecting that. I also had never done a standing figure. All I can say is I'm glad she's wearing a grass skirt!


I tried to make the fondant on the cake look like the ocean. It's also how they do the "marbled" look if you've seen that before. It was actually fairly simple to do. You just squirt dots of color on the fondant and knead a couple of times, then roll it out. I think I'll be doing more marbled cakes. I like the effect and it hides many flaws! :)


The sand is graham cracker crumbs. I thought I was being wise by waiting until I delivered it to put it on, but it made a huge mess and it didn't stick to the side of the "island" so I had to use royal icing and then get the crumbs on and well I'm sure I looked pretty amusing to the people who bought the cake! The cake is Triple Chocolate Fudge with Fresh Strawberry Filling and Vanilla Icing. Yummy combo!


I was very excited to use my edible image printer to do the writing for me, I don't really enjoy doing that.

This second cake was also due the same day as the Luau cake. I don't think I'll be doing that again, that was a bit more than I could handle right now! This was for my niece, Ally's, friend.


I really like this one. I like the color combination and I think I may actually be getting the hang on scroll work! This chocolate icing was much easier to work with than the royal icing on Sleeping Beauty's cake. This is a Triple Chocolate Fudge cake with caramel filling and chocolate icing covered in fondant with a gumpaste bow.

I asked a friend of mine if I could use her glue gun to put the ribbon around the edge of the Hula cake, and when she brought it over and saw what I was doing she asked if I'd make one for her big extended family birthday party on Monday. At that point I hadn't assembled either cake and thought I'd have left over flowers and bow loops so it wouldn't be a big deal to slap something together for her. I was wrong wrong wrong wrong. I used all but one flower and every last bow loop. Somehow I managed to get this one together in time for her though! I really really like this one!


She is the one that ordered the lady bug cake. And she absolutely loves my cheesecake filling, so this is a white cake with strawberry cheesecake filling and the most diving vanilla icing I have ever worked with! and covered in fondant with chocolate icing dots and border and gumpaste bow and flowers.

Would you believe I still have another cake to make this month?? I'll post about that in another week or so. We have company coming so I'll warn you right now I'm going to drop off the face of the earth for a week and a half. Hope you all have a great time!

Had to join in the fun!

I saw this on Jessica's blog, and had to give it a try.

You Are Dr. Pepper

You're very unique and funky, yet you still have a bit of traditionalism to you. People who like you think they have great taste... and they usually do. Your best soda match: Root Beer Stay away from: 7 Up

What Kind of Soda Are You?

Looks like we can't be friends Jessica! :) Back to the cakes...

Happy Birthday Big Sis!

Today is my sister, Kristie's birthday. For those of you who have not been to her blog, she is an amazingly talented knitter. You really should go look at some of the socks she has done recently, and the gorgeous lace work she is doing. She is also so generous about her knitting. She is constantly knitting things for other people and donating tons to various charities. I just can't say enough good things about her!

She sent me pictures of the cake, or rather cupcakes, she wants and I just had to share the link because they are too cute! http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes/#comment-1984

This week I am making 2 cakes for complete and total strangers and wishing I could have figured out some way to send one to my sister. I did attempt sending a royal icing tiara I made to my niece in Pittsburgh. We'll see how that goes! I really need to get back to those cakes, can you tell I'm trying to avoid the endless amount of work still to go???

Where I've Been Part 2

The following pictures are not something that kept me from blogging necessarily, they are just really cute pictures of my girls and I had to share!

Playing dress up! My older sister, Debi, was telling me how her daughter, Sophie, loves to treat her younger sister, Eva, like a doll. She dresses her up and puts make up on her and does her hair and carts her around basically torturing the poor thing, but Eva does not seem to mind. I mentioned this to Julia, not the torture part, and suddenly playing with Sydni is no longer such a bad thing.



They went through several looks, starting with Tinkerbell. You can't tell from the photo, but she actually has her hair up just like Tinks. Very cute!


Next they both dressed up like Belle and Belle must have a rose. I know they aren't red or magical, but it's still a rose.


One last dress up picture of Sydni. She does this little smile every time you tell her you are going to take her picture. Also not a great shot of the hair, but it was hilarious. She even put a bell in her hair. It was kind of nice, she couldn't sneak up on me like she loves to do!


Now we get to what really kept me from blogging. The Sleeping Beauty Birthday Cake. I made this cake for a lady who works at my dentist's office little girl, Paizley. I brought part of my Tinkerbell cake to the office since I practically live there and I had to get the cake out of my house! She loved it and I got a job!
I love love love Sleeping Beauty so this one was especially fun for me. Here's a close up of Beauty. Once again she is made of modeling chocolate and the dress is gumpaste. It's all edible! And I posted her on Cake Central and I am shamelessly bragging here- I was "Popular Cake Photo Added Today" again!! :)

Where I've Been... Part 1

I really did not intend to totally drop off the face of the earth like that, I promise! Things just got crazy around here with visitors and cake making. I have so many things to share, I'm not sure where to begin...
First of all we had unexpected by very welcome visitors, my hubby's brother, wife and kids. They used to live by us and we have kids close in age, so it was so wonderful to see them. I really miss hanging out with them, but alas they have been sucked into the Albuquerque hole (no offense Shay) with the rest of my husband's family and since moving there just isn't really an option for us, seeing them on holidays will have to do.


Here's all the kids being their true selves- absolutely nuts! Starting from the top and going left to right we have baby Brooke (1), Danica (7), my Sydni (2), Bridger (3), Morgan (5) and my Julia (8). I really wish they could live two doors down from me and the kids could hang out every day, they had sooooo much fun! I miss them.

Here's another shot of the girls before we went to the mall, Laura (my SIL) and I are kind of a bad combo in that when we get together we like to shop. She is very stylish and I don't feel like such a moron going into stores I used to shop in when I was younger but usually feel like too much of a Mom to go into now.


The next round of visitors was my sister Angie, her hubby Ken and their kids Kati and Michael. They were on their way back from Vegas and it was Michael's birthday so he just had to have a cake! I got to use my printer!!! He wanted a Star Wars cake, and I thought doing the lava and the big fight at the end of the 3rd one would be fun. My niece got to stay at our house for a few days after that. We had a lot of fun, but I didn't take pictures. I so suck... I also got to see a couple of friends from high school while my niece was here. We went to my friend Aaron and his wife's home in West Jordan and my other friend Julie and her hubby came. We hung out and played Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. Now that was funny. Once again, no camera. It was so great to see them again, and to see all their adoreable little children. Both of them have a set of twins. Too cute!! Here's the cake though:


After that, my parents came to visit for my daughter Julia's dance recital. Sydni FINALLY warmed up to my parents and even loved Grandpa to tickle her. The older girls were running away from Grandpa so he couldn't tickle them, but she kept running up to him and holding out her little foot so he could tickle her. Very cute!



Here's a picture of Julia and her friend Bailey before they danced. The ballet this year was "Over the Rainbow" based on "Wizard of Oz." That's all for now!

"Eintsein on computer"

As I try to type, read, balance the checkbook, my little gremlin crawls up on my lap and says this phrase until I comply. "Einsteins computer, see saw machee (Silly song Machine), Einstein on computer" In fact it's happening right now. So if you wonder why I have not been posting, or commenting on your blogs, it's because I'm trapped in Playhouse Disney listening to Silly Songs over and over and over and over again!!! HELP!!!

My Wilton Roses

I had my last class on Tuesday. I'm sad because it seems like I was just getting to know the people in my class and they aren't offering course 2 until the fall. They are doing Course 3 in July, so I will probably do that one. I would just buy the books and just figure it out for myself, but it's nice to get out of the house away from all distractions and really focus on just decorating.

Here is my final cake. I have been wanting to try a chocolate cake with a peanut butter filling eversince I saw the recipe on Cake Central, so instead of icing my cake in white icing like you are supposed to, I iced mine in Chocolate Ganache. One note on the peanut butter recipe, I cut the recipe in half and then added about 3 more cups of powdered sugar so that it was closer to the consistency of icing. I used it to crumb coat the cake before putting the ganache on. I still had tons left over. The ganache was very easy to make and very easy to use. I highly recommend it!

I am not very good at buttercream roses, they are so much more difficult than I thought they would be. I could not get the number of petals right and doubt I ever will. Not that it really matters, who is going to notice? The instructor told us "practice makes perfect" and to lay our roses out in order so we could see our progression. Mine actually got worse!

That's it for me right now. Hopefully I will figure out how to get the pictures off my camera's internal memory so I can post about our trip up to Salt Lake to see "Les Miserbles." My next post will be my list of books for Shayla though, that I can do!

I was a "Popular Cake Photos -- Added Today"!!!

For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, you obviously have a life and are not completely and totally addicted to Cake Central as I am! I will fill you in. They changed the layout of CC recently and now they have three bars of pictures, one of all time favorites, one with recent favorites, and one of the most recently added cakes. I have mixed feelings about the changes they have made, but I am enjoying seeing the "favorite" cakes. In their galleries you can choose to add a picture to your personal favorites (love that!) and they select the cakes they show by the number of people who liked your cake. So it really was thrilling for a geek like me to be a "popular" cake, since popular is usually not a word I associate with myself! :)

Here is my latest cake:


It is three tiers, the top the Tink is sitting on is foam covered in fondant, the other two are white cake with strawberry and cheese cake filling iced in Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC). I really must say the IMBC is so heavenly tasting, there is no Crisco so no greasy taste and the full recipe only needs 2 1/2 cups of sugar, so it isn't too sweet either. It is very difficult for a newbie like me to smooth though!!! I have an idea I'm going to try next time and I will let you know how it works. So far no one has any tricks for smoothing other than "warm the spatula" I personally need more help than that! Luckily I covered it in fondant so you will never know! :) I love fondant!

A close up of Tink:



Yes, I did make the Tinkerbell. She is made out of modeling chocolate. I really like working with this chocolate. You can seam pieces together smoothly which is a huge bonus when making a scantily clad fairy! I did use gumpaste to make her dress and shoes. Do you want all the details? I can give them in another post if anyone wants. Just trying to get this one finished!

The birthday girl, Julia, and the cake:



My niece, Katelyn (the dark one) loves Tinkerbell. I think she really liked the cake although no one was very interested in eating it since they'd been eating cake since Saturday when she had her "friend" party. Had I know she was already having a cake and party, she would have gotten an edible image on a Walmart cake! I'm only kidding, it was a great experience for me, I had an excuse to try all these new techniques. And I got to be "Popular Cake Photo-- Added Today"!!

My Favorite New Toy

Jessica asked where she could get a printer, and as my reply was growing longer and longer, I decided to just write a new post instead.

There are a lot of printers you could buy to make an edible image. Super expensive specialized ones or a Cannon or an Epson. I chose to go with the Epson C88 because I read so many reviews that said the picture quality with Epson printers cannot be beaten. I even found a couple of reviewers who had both a Canon and and Epson, and they preferred the Epson hands down.

I purchased my printer at Newegg for around $80. I was shocked at how quickly I received my order. And they have amazing prices, I will use them again and again. I ordered my edible inks and edible frosting sheets from KopyKake and that was closer to $200.

There you have it, it's a little expensive to get into, so if you don't want to jump right in you can always order a sheet from me. They cost me (figuring in price of ink etc) about $3 a sheet, so I would charge $6-8 that includes shipping. I'm not sure how much it would cost to ship and package.

Tag! I'm it

Check out these links:
Melissa
4 B's in a Pod
Life According to the PRP
Dandee Designs

Random Thoughts
Bits and Pieces

What was I doing ten years ago?
I was finishing up my second year at Ricks College. I was engaged, so I was probably spending waaaayyy too much time with my fiance. I would have been moving in to my scary old house apt for the summer, meeting my neurotic roommate, desperately trying to find a job, and get tan for wedding pictures!

What was I doing one year ago?
Going to the Dance Festival at Julia's school. They danced to "Under the Sea" and she was having so much fun I couldn't get her to leave after they were finished dancing. She just loves school.

Five snacks I enjoy:
1. Popcorn- every flavor, but especially white chocolate
2. Peanut butter cookies
3. Spinach dip with veggies/crackers
4. Any type of miniature candy bar
5. Hot Tamales, Cinnamon Bears, Chocolate Covered Cinnamon Bears!!!

Five songs I know all the words to:
1. Any Disney Princess Song
2. "Les Miserables" I could literally sing it from start to finish
3. "When Somebody Loved Me" from Toy Story
4. Most U2 songs
5. "Wish You Were Here" Pink Floyd

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire?
1. Show my kids the world (and bring a nanny or a granny!)
2. Open a cake shop
3. Pay off all my debt
4. Save for my kids college, missions, weddings
5. Give everything else away

Five of my MANY bad habits:
1. PROCRASTINATION!!!
2. Not exercising everyday
3. Starting a million projects and never finishing 80% of them
4. Ordering pizza for dinner
5. Assuming too much

Five things I like doing:
1. Cake Decorating
2. Knitting
3. Painting
4. Reading
5. Watching movies

Five things I will NEVER wear again:
1. Maternity clothes
2. Tank tops :(
3. Stretch pants
4. Banana clips
5. Neon anything

Five of my Favorite toys:
1. My edible image printer
2. Digital camera
3. X Box- solely because DH hacked it and it can play every Nintendo game
4. Cuisinart food processor/blender (the mini version)
5. My daughter's Easy Bake Oven, it just takes me back!

I'm tagging:
I don't have enough readers to tag anyone! Since Jessica tagged me that just leaves Kristie and Shayla, if you guys want to do it I will enjoy reading it! Oh hey, Stools, I tag you too. Not sure if you read this...

INSTRUCTIONS:
Remove the blog in the top spot from the link list at the top of this post and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot. Next, select five people to tag.

My First Decorating Class

Last night I learned how to use the star and writing tips. I now know the "proper" way to use them instead of my imagined way! I pretty much knew how to do the star, kinda played dumb in class. The writing instruction was helpful, but feels totally unnatural to me still. I guess it will come in time. Since this class involved making something covered in stars which I've already done numerous times, I decided to try a new skill too. Painting with piping gel. I was really excited about this because lemon extract just dries sooo quickly it's a little tricky for me to work with it.
You are supposed to make a rainbow or character shaped cake for this class. I thought the rainbow looked cheesy, so I decided to do a sunflower and to paint a butterfly on the cake. Here is the finished product:


I transfered the sunflower outline using a piping gel transfer, I REALLY like this trick! I wish I would have done the butterfly as well, but I wasn't sure I was actually going to do it. I didn't want to be a show off or anything, but I decided to just go for it and had to free hand that outline on the cake. Scary!! I think it turned out okay, it's a little lopsided but I got over it. Here's a close up of the little guy:


I liked painting with the piping gel, but here are some things I learned about this. I wouldn't actually paint it on again. I would use a piping bag and then blend with a paintbrush. It would just be a lot easier and faster to do it that way. It doesn't come off the brush very smoothly. It's pretty sticky and thick stuff. In the future I might try thinning it a bit with some lemon extract to play around with the consistency. Also, I would have painted the flower too, but since I was supposed to do star fill in for class, I did.

Just in case you wanted to see the side of the cake as well. I just free handed the stem and leaf as well.

Some other things I learned last night:
1- I am not feeling the parchment triangle love. I'm hoping it is one of those things that just take practice, but for now I so prefer the disposable bags.
2- Piping buttercream is WAYY faster than fondant work.
3- Class buttercream icing tastes disgusting (to me) the other girls in my class really liked it.
4- Having a turntable really helps when smoothing icing.

Next class is figure piping and you are supposed to make a clown cake. Been there, done that! :) Speaking of which, Kristie can you send me the pictures?? I think I will still go to learn the techniques, I'm just not going to bother buying clown heads and making the cake. It's just fun to be with other people that have similar interests. It would be way more fun to have someone I know in the class with me, but oh well. Maybe next class.

Waiting for pictures

Well, it didn't make it. My sis-in-law took pictures, but has not sent them to me yet. I'm not exactly sure how smashed it was, but she said it was pretty bad. On a happy note, she also said it tasted great and they all liked it. That's always nice!
If I had it to do over again, I would definitely remove all decorations from the cake and ship them separately from the cake. Then I would freeze the cake, use my food saver to seal it up, ship it overnight with ice packs and have it completely encased in styrofoam so it didn't matter if it was thrown around. The odds of me ever doing all this? Slim to none!! The most I would ship to someone again is a topper. I don't think that would be a big deal at all. Oh well, it was worth a try. Hopefully I will have some disasterous photos to share soon!

I did it!!

I have not been running in two weeks now. I went running once while we were in vacation in Midway and then I was sick when we got home and then I had a cake to make. I found so many excuses. After being totally stressed out and having a fairly crappy day yesterday I decided to make my sorry self go running. As I started running I thought, I cannot do this! It's been too long, I really need to start walking. I forced myself to keep running though. I did not want to start at week one again. After the first mile I thought, I wonder how much further I can go?? I made it another mile and nearly through the third!!! There is a long steady incline during my last mile and it just did me in. I had about a quarter mile left and I had to walk for 30 seconds, but then I ran the rest of the way! AND I'm not even sore today. I guess technically I should not say I "ran" anything because a- I didn't run the whole 5k, I walked for 30 sec, and b- I don't really "run" I "jog." I'm really excited at any rate, I have not run like this since high school. I am still running at night by myself, but it is now light out when I go and there are actually a lot of people out. I think it helped keep me motivated to keep going, I was too embarrassed to stop with people watching. I'm going to take tonight off, but hopefully I will be able to run it again on the 11th without stopping. I can't believe I'm actually this close to reaching a goal! I haven't lost a single ounce or inch off my body like I wanted to, but it still feels good to know I'm trying.

A Cake in the Mail

The last few days have been a blur for me. I decided to try sending a cake in the mail. This would open my world up to all new possibilities giving me more excuses (or people if you like) to make cakes. My nieces' birthday is the 10th of May and since she was soooo helpful during Julia's Alice in Wonderland party, I decided to make her a cake. I didn't have time to take any pictures along the way or of my "amazing" packing job, but here is the finished cake:


It is a triple chocolate fudge cake with chocolate icing and caramel filling covered in fondant. I tried a new fondant recipe on CakeCentral and I actually think it tastes good. It isn't as sickeningly sweet. Don't get me wrong, I still love my buttercream, but I can eat this stuff.


My sis-in-law called me yesterday to see if I could make a Ford Mustang for the top. Ummm, no! But I did manage to find a little Hot Wheels. It isn't technically a red Mustang, but hopefully she won't notice and hey it's better than nothing right? I think the design of the cake would have been better without it, but hey it's what they wanted not me!

Here is the top of the hat. The numbers and horseshoes are made out of royal icing and painted and then dusted with my fave luster dust.



The hat is made out of modeling chocolate and I really like working with it. It also tastes very similar to a Tootsie Roll. It dries much quicker than fondant which was a bonus since this cake was pretty last minute.


Just one quick picture of the girls eating what Sydni thinks is "cake." FYI, she also thinks "pie" is whipped cream.

So you may be wondering, how on earth did you package that cake? If you weren't, too bad I'm telling you anyway! I took the numbers and the car off for shipment. The only reason they are on the cake is so I could get pictures of it. Gotta build that portfolio, right? I carefully wrapped the numbers in multiple layers of seran wrap. Then I took my Seran Wrap and carefully built up layers around the hat hopefully giving it good support. Then I wrapped and wrapped and wrapped the whole bloody cake over and over again. I used an old box I had from a "Cocoa Motion" my in-laws got us for Christmas one year (love that thing!) It still had the styrofoam in it because I am just that crazy about saving boxes. I cut a circle out of the styrofoam that the cake could sit in snuggly and then just packed it with paper toweling. I really hope it makes it, but I have serious doubts it will. I think just shipping a cake that had completely flat designs would work, but I don't really know. How do some online shops ship their cakes? Maybe I should order one and find out! LOL! UPS flat out told me there was no way the cake would make it. The USPS lady was more reassuring, but still doubtful. So we will see... If Angie sends me pictures, which I hope she does, I will post those as well.