Cakity Cake Cake Cake!

Did you want to hear me talk about cakes a lot? Yes?! Then read on! No? Well, that's all we have here today.

If you've read my blog even twice, you probably know about my love affair with cakes. Frosting to be exact, but cake is my favorite vehicle for frosting. My all time favorite frosting is my dad's Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting. Second place would be my crappy version of it, then third place goes to the magical stuff called But-R-Creme from good old Sam's Club. It is so called due to there being no real butter in it. It's shortening based- which is brilliant as you don't even have to refrigerate the stuff! I may have just grossed out a bunch of you, but if you have no problems with shortening, like me, then let's celebrate! In case you are curious, Costco's cakes don't even come close to Sam's club. Now, did you know that you can buy the frosting directly from Sam's bakery? I bought a smallish bucket of it from them years ago when I made a cake for my niece Caitlin's bridal shower. And I recently purchased a 5 Gallon drum of it to make a wedding cake.

5 gallons drum? Wedding cake? Yep. Sometime in May I was asked to make a wedding cake for some people in our ward. Even though the wedding would take place just a few weeks after Winston's due date I quickly said "YES!", because if anyone is going to be playing bakery, I want it to be me. And the beauty of making someone a free wedding cake is that they can't be mad if it sucks. So all fun fun fun! But back to Sam's Club. The tedium of making wedding cakes is all the baking part. My awesome friend Kristy informed me that you could not only buy frosting there, but also ready-baked cakes that you can decorate yourself. Hello awesome! So the day before the wedding I went to Sam's club and bought a 5 gallon drum of white But-R-Creme and also a box of sheet cakes. The cakes were $18 and change for four sheet cakes and the bucket of frosting was, get this, $10.68. I asked the gal there a few times if that was right, but after clicking on her computer for about ten minutes I finally figured "Oh well. Ten bucks it is!" So for under $30 I had everything to make a big mamma-jamma wedding cake. If you want a 5 gallon drum and it costs more, sorry. Those are the breaks.

Now, I hadn't met the bridal couple, and I was kind of given carte blanche as to design so I thought it could be a perfect time to try out this idea that I had bookmarked months earlier.(P.S. Are you still bookmarking? that's sooo early 2011. Pinterest is totally where it's at. Let me know if you need an invite!) I had heard that the announcements were purple, so I made that my palette, but then I heard the bride loved cows and wanted a cow cake. Ummm, I just pretended to not hear that part, and in my defense, I only got that tidbit the day before I made it. I wanted pretty, so I stuck with my original plan, although I did make a tiny concession at the end.

So I got to cutting, filling, stacking and crumb-coating. Here is the beginning! The purples all read a touch blue in these photos because (like every project I do) it was night time and I am just using a regular camera instead of a dslr camera.
I may be the last person who blogs that doesn't have one.

Ummm, it's a little tilty at the top, but more frosting will help that. I wish I had lightened the third shade of purple as the contrast isn't strong enough. Alas.

Here she is! Would you believe that it used half of my bucket of frosting to make this bad boy?

And here it is with a clean board. I used a box I had gotten in the mail (*Hoarding always pays off! Thanks for the box, Allison H!) that I covered with poster-board and ribbon. I was really pleased, isn't it pretty?

Around 2:30 AM I was hot-gluing tulle and ribbon millinery to plastic cows. Why is it always crazy-town at that time of night? So that was my concession, cow wedding toppers. I left them off in case they didn't want to be represented by heifers. I was told they used them, so that was a relief. I would've felt bad if I offended anyone. But the bride really does love cows. The plastic cows I used had both horns and udders so I cut the horns off one and the udder off the other, is that right? Firths?

I had almost 2 whole cakes left over so I strong-armed my neighbor into letting me make her son's birthday cake. Here it is. Each letter represents a different sport.

Being a super-pushy kind of neighbor, I made her let me do his last year too. In trying to find the pictures I realized I had never blogged it. So here are the pictures from last year. He's into sports and balls if you can't tell. I loved the tennis ball I made, even though the fancy pants butter-cream I made tasted like eggs to me. Real butter-cream is cooked and I wanted to master it. No longer! Not when you can buy fake happiness in 5 gallon buckets. Sadly, his basketball turned out a touch more spaceship, saucer shaped.
Say that 3 times fast. No don't.But back to this year, look how sweet he is!
For a non-relative, I kind of love Grant more than most kids.

Luckily he likes me too.

Post Script- I have no idea if they even liked their wedding cake. I'll just assume that it was acceptable. And I am almost out of frosting. Gross, huh. I've given some away and made a few more projects and now have one container left. It makes me a bit nervous to be so low, but I also realize the need to remove this "staple" from my diet if I want to lose any baby weight. It does make really good cookie-cups, just like the ones they sell at Mrs. Fields stores. Which are awesome, in case you were wondering. P.S.#2- *Hoarding rarely pays off. The original statement was misleading. Don't end up on TLC for the wrong reasons. Also- I know I say "also" and use parenthesis about twenty times too many in this post. I blame baby sleeping schedules.

Eleanor's 2nd Birthday Part 2

We had a low-key party for Eleanor. Just our immediate neighbors over for cake and ice-cream. I made Eleanor a Jessie cake since she still loves Toy Story 1, 2 & 3 with all her heart. And I made Cookie Monster cupcakes because, well, because they were just the cutest thing ever and I wanted an excuse to make them. Eleanor "napped" right up until her guests were here and so she got to see the cake at the same time as everyone else. Right away she started saying "Loot- is Yessie!" over and over. I was pleased.

Here are the treats!

She seriously was so happy with her cake. It makes me want to make her themed food more often. Not really, but look at her sweet smile.

But then! I can't even remember what happened, but she was upset about something of life or death importance. Sweet neighbor Sophie was there to comfort her.

She perked up enough to enjoy the birthday song and candles, but you can still see tears hanging on her cheek in these photos. Too sweet. Hey- this is kind of a family portrait. Clayton, Eleanor, me and the baby poking his way into the picture.

Halfway there! Man it's a lot of work to blow out two candles!

In case you were wondering what 6+ months looks like, here ya go. It looks awesome. Kidding, I look ready to deliver, but the fun part is that I have three months to get even bigger!

Eleanor really enjoyed all the balloons (of which we have about 30 still left around the house) and opening some more of her presents.

Hew new cute baking set which is perfect as Eleanor loves spending time in the kitchen "helping" me make treats or washing the dishes.

Enjoying her new Belle doll. Belle has already been all over town with us.

She also got a little kitchen sink, a puzzle, a barbie, and a vacuum that tells you puns as you push him around. "Hey is that a jackrabbit? No- it's just a dust bunny!" Yeah, he's hilarious. We ended up shelving one last present since she was pleased as punch with her toys. So that was her big day. It's funny how I spent weeks and weeks last year thinking about and planning her 1st birthday This year I was googling Jessie cakes the day of. Until she has friends that care, her parties might just get sadder as the years go on.
And baby number 2? Yeah, he'll be lucky to get a cake.