Hap-bee Halloween!

When I was little, I LOVED Halloween. I would drag out the big box of decorations from the hallway closet and decorate the house. We lived in the country, though, so we never got trick-or-treaters...and mom always shuttled me into my grandma's neighborhood, or one down in town.

As I've gotten older, I don't have the same love of Halloween as I did when I was little. I HATE slasher movies (hate, hate, hate, hate them), don't really like supernatural/spooky movies (kinda hate them, too), and roll my eyes a little bit when I drive past the houses with miles of fake spider webs and a whole graveyard in the front yard.

I do love autumn, though, and I feel like a little celebration of Halloween is always fun. So, earlier this week, I carved this:

Not a traditional jack-o-lantern, but I had fun making it. I used an X-acto knife, a $2 pumpkin knife from Michael's, and--believe it or not--a jumbo open-star frosting tip.

And then I made this:

mmmmmm......braaaaaiiiiiiiins......

And this:

Mummy!

Some cute, non-scary Halloween-themed cupcakes for my husband's Halloween-themed office party.

And then, I dressed up my long-suffering dog like this, and told him to bee a good dog:

Aw! So cute!

Hap-bee Halloween!

60 Sucks...the Epic Fail Resolution

So, remember how in my last post I was writing it at 2:30 in the morning because I had the epic fail of awesomeness with the stacked cake, so I was going to make a sheet cake?

Well, the sheet cake was also an epic fail. The client wanted half chocolate, half vanilla together in one cake. And I knew... I KNEW as soon as I started frosting that it wasn't going to work. When the chocolate cake started pulling apart during the crumb coat, not the actual frosting... I knew I was doomed, but I tried to persevere, anyway.

And the weird thing is that on both the sheet cake and stacked cake, it was the chocolate cake that failed. The vanilla was fine. So, apparently, I need to revisit that particular recipe.

So, at about 3:30 in the morning, I finally broke down, searching through my pantry in tears for magical Option #3. When I came across the marshmallows, I knew I had it. I made marshmallow fondant, and after a few failed attempts to make badges for cupcakes with NY Mets colors of orange, white, and blue, I finally dyed the fondant orange, and used white icing to pipe "60" and blue icing to pipe "Sucks!"

See, it was a surprise 60th birthday party, and they wanted "60 Sucks!" with a bunch of lollipops as a cake topper. Tongue-in-cheek cute, right? Or maybe back-handedly insulting? Either way, it was a close group of people, and they thought it would be hilarious. I ended up sticking a blue and orange Tootsie Pop mini sucker (with white writing on the labels! Mets colors!) on the top of every cupcake, so they looked like this:


I had gone to bed at 5:30 in the morning with the plan to sleep until about 8, but then, ironically, I couldn't really get to sleep. At 8, I texted the client, telling her that the cake gods were really, really angry with me.

She replied, "Fire and brimstone angry?"

I explained the situation as succinctly as I could, aided in large part by sending her the photo of the epic fail. Then I told her that cake #2 also failed, so I made badges for cupcakes (sent pic) and was willing to provide 24 to 36 cupcakes for free, and lend her any cupcake display equipment that I had. She was okay with that--even insisted on paying me anyway--and so I got up, went to the store for eggs, shortening, and cocoa powder (somehow I  had run out during the night, imagine that), and got to work baking.

For once, everything turned out fine--and worked the first time.

She sent me a photo from the party, and said that everyone loved the cupcakes. I think cupcakes are kind of more fun at casual parties anyway--but of course I would think that after the night that I had!

Early in the Evening of Failure, before things started to go bad, I had told Sean that my sister texted me to tell me that she thought the Sweet 13 post was hilarious, because she could imagine Sean trying to duck and cover. 

"She asked if you minded being the comic relief," I said.

"And what did you say?" he asked.

"I said that you didn't mind because you never really read my blog, but I had told you that you were the comic relief, and that sometimes you peek over my shoulder at what I'm writing. And I only (mostly) tell the truth, anyway."

"Mostly?"

"Yeah, well, in the football helmet one I posted a hypothetical conversation where we were talking about football, and since I root for the perceived underdogs, I asked you which defensive line was smaller, and you said, 'what's a defensive line?' "

He just kind of looked at me.

I said, "I know, I know, that's probably unfair. You know what a defensive line is. Probably even better than I do."

He said, "Yes. It's a line. They get very defensive. They really don't take criticism very well."

I started laughing so hard I was crying, and then he was laughing at me laughing so hard that I was crying, that he started to cry.  I kept trying to stop and get control of myself, but then would say, "they don't take criticism very well! Haaaaa!" and I would snort and be off laughing again. The whole thing lasted for about 10 minutes.

So in case you didn't know what a defensive line in football is, it's a bunch of big, angry men, all lined up--who happen to not take criticism very well!

Ugh. Epic Fail.

Ugh.

Do you ever have one of those days where people ask you how you're doing, and you don't even want to expend the effort that it would take to answer in actual words?

That's how I feel. It's a grunting kind of night. Morning. Whatever.

Here's the deal. It's 2:30 in the morning and I'm writing a post because I'm waiting for cakes to cool.

Why am I waiting for cakes at 2:30 in the morning? Why didn't I have them done earlier?

Well, I did, you see.  I had a lot of them done earlier.  And then this happened.

Ugh.

Yeah. That's three layers of cake awesomeness. And by "awesomeness," I mean "awesomely horrible and catastrophic to a degree that there are no words to further describe it."

It's supposed to be a stacked, three-tier cake with berry filling. Although now that bottom layer kind of looks like a pile of diseased poo carnage.... aren't you glad I just put that image in your head?

I was plagued with problems from the beginning, and the thing is, I can't even figure what went wrong. Besides everything, I mean. Obviously, everything went wrong, but what was the crucial first step? My stacked cake the other day turned out fine. The wedding cake that I stacked this summer turned out fine. I would say "WTF" right about now, but I'm pretty sure my grandma reads my blog, and I'm not sure I want to say "WTF" knowing that she'll see it.

I nearly broke down (a couple of times, actually). But I have my TobyMac music on in the background as loud as it can be with my husband sleeping upstairs, and Toby's keeping me tear-free and bee-bopping around the kitchen. It's another one of my "worst is relative" moments... if this is the worst thing that happens to me this week, I'm ahead of 99.8% of the world. I can handle that.

So, right now I have sheet cakes cooling. I've made the frosting, I have the filling ready. I'll post pictures of the finished--and much downsized--final product tomorrow. Hopefully the client (who is a new one, ironically enough) is chill and won't mind a sudden change in plan--and hopefully nothing goes wrong with the sheet cakes. I could do this tomorrow, but I still have a day job that expects me to show up and put in my time... slave-drivers.

And yeah, to my friend who always lets me know what she thinks of my blog posts--you know who you are--I realize that Sean did not make an appearance in this entry. Hopefully there's enough comedic relief without him.

Oh, and I suppose the day wasn't a total cakey waste. I had a lot of leftover goods from the masterfully epic fail of awesomeness above, so I made this cake for my neighbors in about 15 minutes to thank them for all the yard work they've done for us. I didn't tell them that my writing/scrolling icing also failed. Or that it was made of leftover bits from the other cake. Or that the chocolate leaves have been in our fridge for a while because they were from an aborted birthday cupcake batch. Not my best work, but--as I'm reminded as I look at my kitchen island right now--it's nowhere NEAR my worst.

Sweet...13?

So, I have to admit to an embarrassing truth. Nearly all of my official orders come from one woman. She works with Sean and has a fairly large family, so she usually dials me up for birthdays or other important gigs. I'm grateful for her business, but part of me wishes that I could expand more easily. Wait, what? You're telling me I have to do things like advertise and market and stuff? Oh. Okay. Never mind, for now. 

Anyway, this uber-loyal customer contacted me for her daughter's 13th birthday. As we stood in the parking lot near our cars when I delivered her son's New York Giants helmet cake, she told me that she thought she should make sort of a big deal of this birthday, because it was her 13th. When I commented that I didn't have a big deal made of my 13th birthday--or even my 16th--she agreed with me. But she still wanted to go all-out. Who was I to deny her?

She said that she wanted a stacked cake with zebra print and a funky neon green bow on top, and left the rest of it up to me. I'd never done a fondant bow before, but the online how-tos seemed pretty easy. I got the whole cake done fairly easily, using sugar sheet zebra print to save time (and thus money) for the zebra motif. And the bow I made out of marshmallow fondant. About three of my bow loops cracked and died a premature death before I could get them on the cake. I got the whole thing done and stood back to take pictures, zooming in from different angles. When I looked at the pictures to see how they turned out, the bow was wonky and...stupid. 

Something about pictures makes the subject more objective. Like, looking at it on the little digital screen allowed me to see flaws that I couldn't necessarily see when I was up-close and personal. I turned to my husband across the room.

"This bow sucks, doesn't it?" I asked, already irritated and oozing be careful what you say vibes. 

"What do you mean?" he responded. "It depends on what you're going for."

I stood there, simultaneously gaping at him, tamping down irrational anger, and shooting him a venom-laced look of death.

"What I'm going for?" I hissed in a (reasonably) restrained voice. "What do you mean, what I'm going for?" 

He looked at me, suddenly aware that he was on thin ice. 

"Well, uh, I mean, if you're going for the super-deluxe, luxurious, 5-layer bow, then it's not. But if you're just going for a funky bow, it is." His eyes were wide as he looked back at me, waiting to see if he needed to duck and cover or if he could stand his ground.

I continued to glare at him, and then realized how foolish and how stereotypically hormonally female I was being. I willed myself to GET A GRIP and decompress.

"Could you see how deep you were shoveling that hole of yours the more that you kept talking?" I asked him with a (hopefully) self-deprecating smile.

"Yeah" he said tentatively, obviously still unsure if he was still skating on thin ice. "That's why I decided that I had just better shut up."

I let him escape in relief as I tweaked the bow a bit by pushing some parts in, pulling some parts out, and yada yada yada. It turned out fine. After all, I wasn't going after a "super deluxe, luxurious, 5-layer bow." All I needed was "funky." Mission accomplished. 

Give me an N! Give me a Y! What does that spell? Football!

When people ask me if I'm a Broncos fan, or a Cowboys Fan, or  Steelers fan, or whatever, my usual response is, "Uh, I don't really follow any sports, but I can be if you want me to be." When pressed, I'll say that I'll root for the Patriots, generally--because it makes me feel patriotic. Or the Ravens, because of that movie The Blind Side. But really, the only time football is on in my house is normally as background noise in the fall, because it reminds me of my dad.  If I have to root for someone,  I usually just choose whoever's defensive line looks smallest, because they feel like the underdogs.

My husband, bless his soul, cares even less about sports than I do. For instance, if I said, "Hey, do you know whose defensive line is smaller?" his reply might be something like, "Um... what's a defensive line?"

He has many other redeeming qualities, though. To illustrate: last weekend we took a day trip to look at foliage and hunt down some covered bridges in Vermont. We went to lunch, then walked into a co-op art gallery downtown with my parents. The long-haired, bearded, tie-dye-garbed guy behind the counter squinted at Sean for a few seconds, and then said, "Hey. Has anyone ever told you that you look like Ryan Gosling?"

Sean looked startled for a second, then looked at me, then laughed and said, "Actually....yes."

The first time it happened, it was a little old lady at the grocery store or somewhere. So when I told him that of course I always knew he was good looking, and even strangers agreed with me, he was able to shrug it off and say that she probably needed new glasses.

Hard to come up with that excuse for the young tie-dyed hippie man behind the counter, though.

"Or a little bit like Ryan Reynolds, too," hippie man said.  "Like a famous Ryan combo!" Sean and I squinted at each other. Ryan Gosling, ok. That's rooted in truth. But Ryan Reynolds? Not so much.

And my dad really helped. As we were leaving, he said, "Who did that guy say Sean looked like?"

"Ryan Gosling," I responded.

"Who is Ryan Gosling?" he asked.

So anyway, to recap--I just said that my husband's passing resemblance to Ryan Gosling is a redeeming quality for not caring about sports. That both suggests that not caring about sports is something for which redemption is necessary, and that I am shallow enough to accept good looks and relative hotness as said redemption. I don't really feel like either is true, but meh--it makes a good story. (Plus, I've been told by a regular reader that I can't publish any more posts without including Sean as comic relief--so that's naturally going to result in some non-sequiteur stories.)

My original point was that I'm so out of touch with sports that when someone asked if I could make a flat cake shaped like a New York Giant's helmet, I had to do a Google image search and check out the logo first, before I gave an answer. When I saw that the logo was a simple NY on a blue helmet with a red stripe, I said yes.

I printed the logo out on regular paper, then cut it out on top of marshmallow fondant with an Xacto knife. With the exception of the NY, everything else is buttercream. To get the smooth effect, I did the classic coat, chill, and smooth with a Viva paper towel. It works, people. It really works.

I would really love to post the picture of the birthday boy enjoying his cake, but it's against my morals to post other people's kids on a public blog. Let's just say that the little boy was SMEARED with blue, and had to make an immediate trip to the bathtub before he turned smurf-like. You know frosting is kid-rated good when it turns your mouth (and your hands, and your face) blue!