I have a niece getting married next week. I offered to help her with her invitations and cake. I have more confidence in the graphic design of her invitation than her cake but I’m willing to take a stab at it.

Here’s the invitation:

And here’s the first ‘test’ cake.

I’m excited now that I’ve done a test cake at what the real one will be like. Especially knowing I’ll have access to real cake materials and not homemade cardboard frames.

However, it just goes to prove that where there’s a will there’s a way. *snort* I wish you could see the disaster under the top layer of this test cake. It was a cake baked with the cardboard frame on a cookie sheet, and made without eggs because I didn’t realize I only had one when the recipe called for 3 until I was knee deep into the process. It was already crumbling before I attempting to put it on top of a patchwork of rice krispy treats to get it to a 4″ height. I’m still amazed I could make it look anything like a hexagon at all. Blake said it tasted great though and he enjoyed digging into it moments after the test rounds were complete. Their purpose of learning were served and now I think I know what we want to do for real thing.

For my own purposes, I’ll share some of the details that I know today I think I’ll remember but when the time comes it will all be muddled in my memory:

wedding cakes are HUGE. You can’t really downsize if you want a tiered cake because you need at least 3″ between each layer to look right and allow decorating. You have to start deleting layers and spacing them with some sort of separation.

typical wedding pan measurements are 2″ high, they need to be doubled to make 4″ layers both to look right and to allow decorating space on the sides.

rice krispy treats work great as the base, but it takes a ton of them to make the right sized tiers. It took 6 1/2 batches to do the two layers I have a picture of which are only one 2″ base 15″ across and one 2″ base 12″ across. That means it would take 13 batches to do complete two layer bottoms.

ganache tends to remain a little chunky even if you melt the chocolate before adding the cream. However, you can remelt the mixture after it’s cooled and it will become perfectly smooth. That can then be re-chilled and whipped into a smooth frosting. Letting it cool for a few minutes after remelting makes a better drizzle as it’s slightly thicker.

fruit garnish like lemon or orange rine ribbons can sit for a day in the fridge before decorating. They will harden slightly in whatever shape formed in and hold color without drying for several hours in the open air.

doing test runs are wonderful for so many reasons!

A few more test cake photos can be found at: Lindsay’s Wedding

Happy Birthday sweetie!

I’m doing some learning this week and I’m so excited with today’s results I have to blog it! Today’s sweet success was learning all about chocolate ganache. I’ll share more details later about the reason for the lessons, for now I’ll share how fun and easy the stuff is!

A friend suggested that I try the ganache for all my needs on a single cake. She was right! It’s not only easy, it’s extremely versatile and tasty! It’s nothing more than equal parts of heavy cream and chocolate mixed together. You boil the cream and pour it over the chocolate, then mix it well. The possibilities are endless as you can use any kind of chocolate. For my test run I used what I had which was a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I was a little impatient (me to a “T”) in letting it set so my first stab using it as a drizzle and fruit dip was really runny. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a couple days. She told me if I let it chill, I could whip it and use it as a frosting too. Today I gave that a stab and was so tickled with the results!

Here’s my first test of the ganache minutes after mixing as a fruit dip and drizzle:

It was tasty but much to thin to make drizzle tips.

Today I wanted to see if I could make it work for frosting as well. I pulled the bowl from the fridge and stirred a small section. I dropped it over the side of some rice crispy treats to see if it would make a pretty drizzle formation and it worked! Better yet is that now a few hours later it looks exactly the same, it hasn’t melted nor gotten a hard shell on it. Next, I put some in my mixer and whipped it for a few minutes watching the change. There’s a point where it goes from creamy frosting to a thick, sponge like frosting texture. So I put the thick on first to see if I could make some defined corners. That worked great but I wasn’t happy with the lack of smooth finish. So I took a little more and didn’t let it whip quite as long, put that over the thick edge one and it was perfect! Three solutions with one simple mixture!

Now that I know how easy it is to have the ganache do the frosting, details and dip/drizzle I’m ready to tackle the full sized test run. Wish me luck!

Mother’s Day is almost here again. I’m so bad at remembering to get my own thoughts of love to my Mother’s until the day. It doesn’t mean they aren’t thought of all the time and loved even more!

Today Taylor brought me home this:

I don’t know what I love more, the fact that he thinks I only weigh 44 lbs or that I wish they’d calm down a little more! *snort*

I find this headline today not only interesting but fairly accurate:

Today’s tykes: Secure kids or rudest in history?
Parents’ focus on self esteem may neglect compassion for others
by Susan Gregory Thomas.

The article cites a few examples of rude, over protective parental reactions and how it may be impacting their children. There are shared concerns by many of this disruptive and inconsiderate behavior that seems to be on the rise.

“It may be that today’s parents are so fixated on their children’s emotional well-being that they’re teaching them that the well-being of others is comparatively unimportant”, says Dr. Philippa Gordon

I find this very interesting as well as accurate. I also agree with the author and those interviewed that no one will want to hire these inconsiderate children when they grow up. We could be raising an entire generation of bad, stinky apples; those who are too ripe for their own good. I hope I can teach my kiddos to stay green and growing all their lives. No one likes an arrogant know-it-all.

I’ve shared posts in the past about the lack of decorum today, the concerns for youth who aren’t learning basic communication and social skills. While I may not declare this article’s title an epidemic I’d certainly have to agree that rudeness is on the rise.

It may not be a real word but it sure describes how I’m feeling right now. It’s actually been a “hmmmm” kind of week or so. I’ve not been sad, just really reflective and well…..in a word, hmmmmmmm. I don’t have any answers as to why, even though Blake tried as hard as me to figure that one out. He even sent me these to cheer me up!
Little things mean a lot.

Then there’s the mischievous hmmmmmm. This is the one my kids have mastered. Like this look:
This look reminds me how on my toes I need to be all the time. *wink*

So I’m sitting here at home. Alone. That’s sure to be a sign of changing times and I’m not sure if I like it.

My son is at a birthday party. There wasn’t a show-time for the Hannah Montana movie (we’ve been procrastinating) that fit the party two hour window. So I dropped off my son for the party, grabbed a quick bite of dinner with hubby and daughter and dropped them off at the theater. Now I’m killing time before the birthday party is over and then it will be back to taxi driver when the movie ends.

Where did the past ten years sneak off to? I swear I was just chasing my toddler around and basking in a high metabolism. I guess on the bright side I have ten years of technology advancements to soothe me. In fact, tonight I figured out how to enjoy my iTunes on my home theater sound system. Maybe I’ll throw on some 80’s tunes and pretend. *snort*