Wow, part three. By a show of hands, who here is
A. Surprised I've stretched this story out this far.
B. Surprised I updated at all.
C. Surprised I have this much of a life to write about.
D. All of the above.
(Just in case you are wondering, I'd take all answers but A. )
On with my story: It was a dark and stormy prevning* in a month before July that I and my awesome friend who is awesomely still my friend, agreed to make a wedding cake for yet another awesome friends brothers wedding. (I'll give you a sec to re-read that)
The cake was darling and simple and I was excited to pull out my disposable piping bags again. This was before I had my surgery scheduled. But even when I was aware of the timing, everything still seemed to fit. Hurray.
And then another awesome friend needed a cake. This time for her own wedding, and I couldn't say NO! If one cake aroused the decorator in me then another could bed it back down and I wouldn't end up with pounds of random pointless cake at my house, again.
As Fate would have it, and Karma, and probably Ying and Yang mixed together with fung shui my Awesome-still-my-friend Friend was asked to make a cake!!
At this point, why the heck not, right?
Chaos looked something like this:
And we aren't talking quick single layer cakes either. We're talking about WEDDING CAKES! These are important. These are the showcase, these get put in a place of honor so that they can shine and tell the world about it's bride and groom! Wedding ANYTHING is a big freaking deal, Brides complain about not finding the right color amongst a billion perfect colors, they aren't going to miss that you "accidentally" put an elephant on their cake and not roses.
I know I said it only took five days for me to get back on my feet, well I sorta kinda lied. Yes I was on my feet, but as anyone who saw me on my feet can attest, I shouldn't have been there. I have this thing about doing nothing, I hate it. It actually makes me feel worse to "relax". Sitting around and healing? Nah, that's for all those other people, I had to get up and be fabulous.
Was I in pain? You better believe it. Did I almost pass out more times then anyone really knows? You sure bet I did. Did I lift things behind peoples back just so I could prove I could? Righty-roo! Did I relapse a couple times? Darn toot'in I did.
Don't ask me why I did any of this to myself, because all this comes from the same mind that brought you:
Have you ever baked a cake? If you have, then you've undoubtedly covered your kitchen with batter and flour and chocolate, had a sink piled high with dishes, and had kids/pets running around? Ok, now imagine doing all that in my kitchen, which is about five times smaller than yours.
Ya, so you'll understand why we moved the whole party to my moms house. Whose kitchen is five times larger than a school cafeteria. (Ok not really, but compared to mine it is) With just as many ovens (this becomes important, stay tuned).
Even with the magical kitchen of Oz, Amazing Friend and I still prepared for a whole week to get things in order. And, believe it or not, all our anti-stress tactics worked!
Organization and planning, who knew?
Everything for all three cakes were made before hand, days in advance. By the time we hauled Cake and Company to my moms we were feeling good and ready to kick some cake. (no cakes were actually kicked .. that we know of)
Our first day rocked, however it was cut short because my mom had promised to throw a bridal shower that day, and it's kind of tacky to make one brides wedding cake in the midst of a another brides shower.
Everything was put away, and the party was a hit, not to mention clean and sans all cake except the Barbie Bride cake I made while I was supposed to be making another cake.. ya that sounds strange to me too.
Wedding cake number one resumed the next day, bright and early. If only we had known what laid in store for us. I would have had it recorded.
It was a Saturday so the entire household was in and out of the kitchen most of the day. Sometimes just passing through, sometimes helping or grabbing a piece of chocolate and running, but they never left with out commenting.
In those two days at my family's home Awesome-still-my-friend Friend found out more about me then she had in the 5 years we've lived by each other. To my intense embarrassment. One of the things she learned was where I get my quirky side from, and (I love you, don't hate me) my dim-wittedness.
Around lunch time everyone congregated in the kitchen, because ya know, that's where the food is. Everyone was laughing, and talking and making some sort of edible item, all of which involved ovens. Now at this point Wedding cake Ono was completely baked, frosted and fondanted leaving just the pretty bits to be placed and arranged.
So when I smelled smoke, as I was washing my hands (for literally the hundredth time) and asked "What's burning" and got the reply of "CAKE!!!" You can imagine my horror! Picture if you will a three layer round cake covered end to end in rolled out marshmallows, on fire**.
That picture lanced through my mind as I spun quickly to see that no, my cake was not on fire, but a quick look in the oven (that had been hastily opened by my brother) showed that Barbie was.
As was a platter of cookies that had been left in there to chill. What had caught fire was the dripping frosting from Barbies dress onto the heating coil at the bottom.
Honestly I wish I had my video recorder, everything went by so quickly and so humorously that I'm sure we could have won all the prizes on America's Funniest home Videos.
Simultaneously people started running around trying to douse the wee flames in the bottom of the top oven. Water was recommended of course, but we didn't let it stop there; a fire extinguisher materialized, (only to be put on the counter to watch the action) a moist towelette arrived , though a little confused and out of sorts and flour*** became a brief option until it was traded in favor of a mystery bottle from under the sink.
Awesome-still-my-friend Friend, Sissy-Inlaw and I watched on in comedic horror as my parents and brother tried to put the fire out. Apparently the threat of a fire wasn't enough to discourage us working on the cake, are we hard core or what?
Once the mystery bottle was unleashed, things really started to heat up. Literally, for while my dad vehemently attested to it's "watery-ness" when it was squirted onto the, maybe five inch flames, they shot up 200%, licking the upper cabinets.
Sound exploded out of the house in the form of yells, curses, laughter and maybe a whimper from my Friend. While everyone, including myself, tried to explain to my dad that "THAT IS NOT WATER!" my other self was looking at the fire extinguisher wondering if it was actually going to join the party soon, and if Me running for the back door with a million pound cake was going to happen.
It didn't, but what did happen was another test run of the mystery bottle, this time "washed out". Again flames licked the cabinets. Not a surprise to the rest of us, who were all, in our own way, telling my dad to put the bottle down and back away slowly.
The best part of all this was that we were all laughing, like fire was a stand up comedian or something, we loved it! After a few more power struggles, and an explanation that 'flour is flammable and baking soda was probably what they meant to say', wet and real water was used and the drama was over.
Well not completely, my dad had to try a last ditch attempt at proving that the mystery bottle was just water. He triumphantly squirted it into his mouth, and then ran for the sink.
I don't think we found out what truly was in the bottle, but my dad is fine, and I still love him to absolute pieces. As I do this cake, those coughcakepopscough next to it however I do not. Feel free to play the "guess what these look like" cake-pop game in the comment section. My family was getting pretty creative in their descriptions.
The following cakes were not nearly so fantastical in their creating, but were no less fun! Both were very close together so they didn't get the personalized treatment that Cake Un did. Even still I think they came out splendidly. All frosting and fondant was already made for them so again all we had to do was make the cakes and decorate.
It was these cakes that took me out of my comfort zone as far as decorating went. They required FLOWERS, and while I learned how to make several ie: royal icing pansy, roses, drop flowers ect. and fondant roses, I had never learned gum paste. They didn't offer those classes when I was taking them.
Luckily for me ASMF-Friend is the new Wilton instructor at the Bountiful Michaels, and she's a wizard when it comes to making gum paste flowers. She made the majority of them, but I learned quickly and they turned out amazing!!!!! (yes they need that many exclamation points)
Our final cakes did just what I wanted them to do: leave me with no desire left to make another cake for a very long time. I'm not saying I wasn't satisfied and awed by what can be achieved by over whelmed, post surgery and almost flambéed ladies, because those cakes looked AWESOME. But I am saying that the more cakes I make, the more I remember why I don't want to make cakes.
So Part 4 was going to be something, but now it's nothing because I can't remember what I was going to write.
So after this we will be going back to our irregularly scheduled blog postings.
Love ya'll
UPDATE!!So I totally forgot to mention that my darling Sister-sue asked me to make a baby-shower cake for her the weekend before the cake chaos started. This is what she got:
*qouted from the best show EVER, name it and I"ll say something nice about you in my next post. I swear it.
** Actually that sounds pretty awesome, no really, do you think it'll puff up and get golden crispy??
***Yes it really did.. sadly.
