The Hunger Games

Guess who got to make the cake for the premier of one of the hottest, most anticipated movies of 2012? (If I sound biased, it's because I am.) Me, of course! ;P

The local movie theater asked Betty Cakes if they wanted to make a cake for the midnight premier of The Hunger Games, and as the resident Hunger Games fan, I was asked to design and decorate the dummy cake to be displayed. Yay! 

It took me about five hours to decorate the four tier dummy cake, and although it wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be (like, I ran out of gray fondant, so I kinda had to MacGyver the bottom tier), and the medallion on the top of the cake broke at some point before the movie started, so I had to make another one a couple days later. I was so disappointed when that happened! I don't know if the buttercream "glue" just didn't hold and it slid off, or if someone touched it and it broke that way, but either way, it's a little heart breaking when the cake you made falls apart, even a little bit.

Other than that, though, I believe the cake was a big hit, and the sheet cake slices that we made at Betty Cakes and gave away for free were a big hit. Who knew movie theaters were such great promotional locations for bakeries? The downside was that they ran out of cake so quickly that my roommate and I, who were attending the movie premiere, didn't even get a slice! 

Your Cakes Are Falling Apart, or: Why Cake Related Nightmares are the Worst

The night before my best friend's brother got married, I barely slept at all. And surprisingly, it's not because I shared a bed with a puppy and a small child (beds were hard to come by that night, lots of family from out of town and all that). No, it's because I had awful, terrible nightmares.

And honestly, I can only remember one other cake which struck such terror into my heart, and that was the peacock cake that I had to deliver the week my boss was out of town (and which went over much more smoothly in real life than it did in  my dreams). 

Why do I keep putting myself in these situations?

The central theme of these nightmares (yes, that's plural) was that the cake fell apart, which was a real fear for me because a) I was making this wedding cake completely 100% by myself (which some untrained help in the form of my best friend), and b) because I had to take apart and re-bake the 2nd tier on the cake mere hours before the wedding. Ok, so it was just the day before. But, still. Nail biting stuff!

Everything about the cake went ridiculously smoothly the day of and the day before the wedding. Before that? Not so smoothly. I completely understand all the ridiculous melodrama on cake shows now: that stuff is not made up. There was the fact that my A/C went out in my apartment, that I completely ruined an entire batch of icing, that I had to rebake 3 layers of cake because they cracked and crumbled, that I got Rickroll'd by Pandora (I mean, so traumatizing, right?), that I kept knocking over the green petal dust for the BILLIONS of leaves I made...

Can we just have a moment to admire how
smooth this fondant is?

But once I started frosting those cakes and covering them in fondant (ok, I'll admit that I did re-cover the 8" and 6" tiers because I couldn't get them smooth enough the first time) and cutting dowels and stacking them (that was the exciting part!) and airbrushing the leaves and intricately placing them all over the cake at 2 in the morning the day before the wedding as the groom's mother rushed around getting everything perfect (and it was all perfect)... everything came together. It was beautiful. It was bliss. It was zen.

And when I got the cake to the reception and it was all set up on the cake table with the cake topper and the bride and the groom saw it and everyone said it was beautiful and delicious... I remembered, over and over again, why cake decorating is not just my job, but my passion.

Now if only I could remember to make business cards...

My baby sister turned 18 and all she got was this awesome cake

Happy birthday, Katie!

This is the story of how I created a beautiful cake without my giant pantry full of cake decorating supplies, and successfully made it both delicious and delicious-looking.

The only problem (apparently) was that we had French vanilla cake mix in the house and being the efficient and non-wasteful person that I am (or lazy), I decided to use that mix. Even though Katie wanted chocolate cake. But I made her chocolate buttercream!

So this hand mixer is as old as my parents' marriage. But it still works! Mostly.

I tried to make zebra stripes in the cake itself, but I think I might need to work on my technique a little more. And also I used green-dyed cake batter, as opposed to white and chocolate cake batter...so it looked less zebra-y than it should've.

But, hey, it still looks good! Right?! And I even found flowery candles at Kroger, so my sister's love of all things flora shines through with this cake, as well as her love of chocolate.

And as a postscript to the title, she did get more than just this awesome cake. But I still thought it was a good blog post title anyway. So there.