How to decorate a cake

My daughter dreams big.  She plays big, laughs big, cries big- why should planning the perfect birthday cake be any different?  When I innocently asked to plan her cake last year, we ended up with a giant three layer cake.  That would be three sheet cake layers! Appropriate for feeding about a hundred guests, last year's cake fed the eight us us just fine, with leftovers to feed co-workers, friends and family for a loooong time. 
   This year I thought would be simpler.  Ha!  We had fun designing a cake just like the one in Disney's Surprise For A Princess book. Except ours was pink and white instead of blue and pink.  This was a four layer cake (!!) (I know- so not an improvement from last year- but the layers were smaller). It honestly looked like a lovely wedding cake.  It gave me great confidence in my scant cake decorating skills and the allowing the big birthday girl to help with it all was awesome!  Here are some things that worked well for us.


Start with a mix! For this giant cake I used two boxes of yellow cake mix.  his time I used Pillsbury brand, but I have also had success with anything Martha White or Duncan Hines makes. I prefer to crack and add all the eggs at once so I don't forget how many I put in.  Laugh if you like but it has happened many, many times!  Runny cake is just gross!

Think outside the box- or, er, circle- for your pans.  Creating this cake of many layers required the usual 9'' layer and 8''  layer round pans.  Then we ended up using a large round casserole dish and a very small oven-safe pan that came with a play kitchen set.  A ramekin or single cupcake size would have worked as funny.

A cookie sheet (with no sides) wrapped in foil provided a great cake plate for this giant.  Last year I  flipped a cookie sheet (with sides) upside down and wrapped it with wrapping paper taped to the non showing side.  (I was going to write bottom- but that's now the top of my platter.  SO now I've made it more confusing!)  Then I put strips of wax paper under the edges of the cake.  This way when the decorating is done you can gently pull these out and no icing messes will be left on your platter.  I think it would be easier to remove these before you do the last icing on the very bottom edge of you cake.  It was my experience that the icing pulled out a bit in a very scary way, but ended up looking fine.  I would love to hear opinions from people with more experience here!

By all means let the birthday kid help!  This part was a bit hard for me at first to be honest.  I wanted it to be perfect for her & that meant not sloppy edges.  But- we had a blast and she did much better than I would have thought.  Kids are really great for the crumb layer- very correctable.  Letting them use a smaller knife is helpful too.  My daughter used the knife that came with a play set.  Flat sides are all that's necessary.

The finished cake!  It's very difficult to see the great results we had because of my current camera limitations.  I would love to, and hope to create a few posts just on cake decorating techniques.  For now I will say just experimenting with the tips on a piece of wax paper can really help you figure out what they can do.  For this cake I did everything I needed to do with each tip.  I started by using a star tip to create the flowers around each layer's edge top.  Then I added the bottom and top layer ribboning along the edging by using the star tip ad wiggling it back and forth in place. To make the hanging bands you see on the top and bottom tiers, I simply used a leaf tip, started on one star and pulled out and away from the cake to create the drape effect.  Then I touched the tip to the cake again at the other end to fasten it down.  I did stop and put all of the icing (including the applicator) in the refrigerator.  Colder icing is more firm, helping it to hold it's shape.

My cake decorating also turned into party entertainment for some of the earliest guests!  I decided to see that as a bonus- not a lack of scheduling skills!!

To Dye For

I decided to try an experiment in dyeing today.  Not dying, before anyone gets concerned.  I have used many random things to dye or at least mark up fabric in the past.  Okay yes, some of them were accidents, but some were really cool accidents!!  Once, long ago, I dyed a pattern with mustard which I then heat set in the microwave.  last summer my daughter and I painted a yard sale shower curtain with baby blue food coloring.  It was a lovely Ralph Lauren fabric, floral splattered curtain.  On its own, it was just a little too shocking. Plus, I have always loved the combination of strawberry red and baby blue.  I wish I had taken more pictures of that project- it was lots of fun!  Back to the present- I bought a pair of Capri pant at Old Navy last year, when their branch in my town was closing.  I paid a quarter for these pants- yep- a quarter. Now if you don't know me very well the deal of these pants made them well worth buying in my eyes.  Never mind that they were a ridiculous color (if you can imagine Pepto Bismol pink after surviving a nuclear reaction you would come close to the glowing might of this pink), or that capri pants aren't usually my favorite cut, I bought them.  Everything can be fixed with a little putty and paint.  Or in this case a dye job and some sort of mega hem/ contrasting fabric legnthener thingy still to be determined.  So I decided to attempt the food color dye again.  I figured this would be the most kid-friendly dye I could use.  While we were at it we also tried a few other fabric swatched in the mix. My daughter invented her own round of experiments. 

What we learned follows:

Food coloring is unbelievably fun to mess with.  Watching it swirl in the bowl is Zen-like.  The first picture on this blog is a result of my daughter just swirling and "inventing" new colors in glasses.  Seriously- are there any other art/craft projects this cheap or easy to clean up after? 

Food color dye works better on some fabrics than others.  None of these fabrics took any color at all until we put them in the microwave and cooked them for a minute in the dye.  Even after that the heavier upholstery weight fabrics barely held the dye.  The jersey fabric held better.  I also threw the fabrics in the dryer to try to heat set them even more.

No matter how cheap something is, it may not always be worth your time.  In another bargain craze I bought yards of the striped fabric you can see in the upper right.  It was only 50 cents a yard!!!  Come on!!! While I still will use it for lining stuff, it does seem to have the power to induce seizures, severe vomiting and other strong reactions (please consult your doctor before viewing this fabric if you are pregnant or have a heart condition) if you dare to view it while it or you are moving.  I assumed dyeing it would lessen the contrast & help it.  It refused to dye!!  Ah well, on to plan B.  Permanent markers?  Tea?  Random food stains?

As for the pants who started this whole mess, that will remain for another post!

Spring...Come on!!

This week has been such an interesting mix of weather here, and I'm sure everywhere else!  I had just pulled my summer clothes down from the loft and had them all neatly packed onto their shelves.  Okay- some neatly packed and some just shoved!  Next thing I know my mom is warning of an impending snow storm on Sunday.  We did get snow and sleet and sunshine in the afternoon.  Weird.  My head is confused.  Not my brain- my head.  It was pounding for most of today.  "Make up your mind barometer!"  it chanted as it pulsed in my temples.  Oh well. My heart knows the weather just fine.  Despite the blips, I know it is Spring, pushing its way up from the ground and out through the ends of each branch.  Come on Sun- I am here and ready!

Early this week I shucked the sweater down at the river.  I hear there's more warmth waiting at the end of this week.

I would like to believe that all of life's aches and just general bumps in the road could be fixed with a frog covered purple band aid as my daughter does.  This one did help!  Mostly I appreciated her caring concern.

I wish you the feel of sun on your face, with its healing, recharging power.  I wish you band aides carefully applied by someone who loves you for all of your boo-boo's!

 

Time for Play

Just a few snippets from today.  I'm always struck by how much fun- really deep down fun it is to play with blocks.  If you are ever down or in need of distraction and you happen to have a child in your life- blocks are your immediate solution.  I'm kinda planning on keeping my daughter's blocks long after she's "outgrown" them.  I may claim to keep them for decorating with, and they would be lovely.  Mostly I will keep them because the bright colors and combinations just make me feel good.  Building feels good.  Knowing there are no wrong decisions (okay if you count something that falls over, but that's quickly fixed and part of the fun!) feels great!  Go ahead- play!

In another game, my daughter likes to pretend she's a sparrow.  The picture below is one of her sparrow treats- a bowl of "worms".  I find it hysterical that she loves to pretend to eat worms but will not touch rice because it's too weird.  Ahh. Life.

What made me happy today?
* Building things...
* Decorating the towers with beaded necklaces, a pleasing mix of shiny and wood.
* Pretending to be a bird, complete with flying, "worm" snacks and feathery cuddles.
* Seeing real birds seemingly by the hundreds in the yard.  The robins are huge and hungry this spring!

The Equinox and the Search for Balance

 Yesterday was the Spring Equinox.  My mom was a science and math teacher for many years and she adored this trick.  You can stand a raw egg on its end and it will not roll away!  She is 60ish and still giggles at the thought of this wonder.  I love it too- Mother Earth doing another magic trick for us. As if all the rest weren't quite enough.  During this time of year her mighty gifts are just awakening around us.  This one's weird and just plain cool.  It works during the Fall Equinox as well so give it a try!  This guy's ability to stay still, perched like that, of course drew me into my own questions about balance.  The balance I'm seeking now involves how to be a full time, loving mom and still retain some of my own identity along the way.  When do my passions get a chance?  The creative tasks of blogging and picture taking certainly help in this category.  Focusing on the positives of the day to post here help me achieve some balance in terms of what happened during my day.  Using whatever tools it takes to pull out all the positives is a really good  and necessary thing.  The following is a picture I just had to take, and is a really great example of using a creative outlet to find balance.  Knowing that I want to express myself on this blog through photos, I have been really paying more attention to the beauty around me.  This is another of Mother Nature's Equinox wonders.  I can almost hear these buds chanting Spring is here!  Spring is Here!! SPRING IS HERE!!!!

March 16th Ready, Set, Go!

Fabric and Food- what could be better? What's making me happy today?

* This stack fabric, just waiting to be made into bags. Hoping I'll be willing to part with them when they're done...

* That my daughter took the fabric picture- way to go!

* Having a husband who makes beignets instead of biscuits just because his daughter asked...even though it took longer. Oh were they good!

* A evening dinner at "Marinara's" (what my daughter keeps calling Panera's). Incidentally I think that would make a lovely name for an Italian restaurant.

Hope your day is full of promise like that stack of fabric- waiting to see what you'll make of it!

March 15 Pushing Spring

Today was a day for "Pushing Spring". Here's what brought joy to my day:

* Tromping down to the river in fleece coats and warm layers...and flip flops!

* That my little girl made the heart pictured out of a piece of twine we found there.

* A cypress knee as a bag holder

* A lovely collection of sea or I guess river glass growing by the day. You can barely make some pieces out by the bag near the shovel. I have a ridiculous amount and dream of turning them into something lovely...

Here's hoping you turn all your moments into something lovely too!