Cake Decorating Practice

The other day, a friend of mine asked me to make the dessert for her daughter's 10th birthday party. I happily accepted a chance to make someone happy AND practice my cake decorating skills. For your amusement, here I take you through the process step by step. I do feel like I'm getting better every time, and I so love this. Making cakes is making edible art. Everything is gone at the end except the memories. Whatever I create will be destroyed, so it is temporary art. Kind of like sushi, I guess. Except no fish. :)

The Design

We met at a local coffee shop and talked about details. What kind of cake, what kind of filling, what kind of decorations. I borrowed crayons from my kids, and used a pad to sketch out ideas. Here's the result:

In case you can't read my handwriting she decided to do a 'springtime' theme; including bugs and butterflies and flowers. The cake would be cupcakes, chocolate with raspberry filling and raspberry icing. The icing would be purple, her favorite color. I also tried to show her in my drawing what the result would look like, hence the blue sketch in the lower left corner.

The Plan

I had done flowers before so I wasn't worried about that, and I had an idea for making caterpillars using a snow-man style method (stacking up balls and squishing down). I was, however, not sure about the butterflies.

In the cake decorating blogs and articles I've read, the hardest thing about butterflies is that you are either going super-realistic or cartoony, but not both. I would have to choose my method before I began.

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One way to do butterflies is to be realistic, say, by taking pre-printed edible rice paper and cutting out butterfly shapes. These shapes can then be bent and molded to look like butterflies have landed on your cake. Here's an example from cakecentral.com. I even went to the store and looked at options for edible paper; but in the end, I decided not to go that way. Firstly, it wasn't 'created by me', it would have been someone else's pattern or design. Secondly it wouldn't have worked with the other items I was doing, the caterpillars were going to be more cartoony than realistic. Third, it was for a kid's party and I thought that was leaving 'springtime fun' and moving into 'elegant' which didn't fit the theme.

So I decided to go cartoony. I even got candy eyes and decorated them with chocolate candy dots.

Several hours later.... here's my result.

The Finished Dessert

Again, I had an amazing time preparing this for my friend and seeing the final product come to life. The look on the birthday girl's face was something I'm not going to forget for a very long time. She wanted to know what she could eat (everything on the cupcakes) and which one she could have (I made a special daisy that she chose, you can see it in the center of the larger cupcakes). All the kids loved them. I can tell because they ate both the cupcakes and the frosting, and they came back for seconds. Usually that's a good sign!

Here's a few pictures of the finished product. Note that I included a few toy bugs as supplementary design elements, you can tell the difference because the toys are on the tablecloth/plate.

The mini cupcakes were also chocolate, but didn't have any filling.

Thanks for reading! Please add your thoughts below. Are you practicing a new skill too?

Janet

Empathy and Conflict

I'm in the middle of reading a fascinating book, "Getting to Yes". It's all about learning the best ways to negotiate to agreement.

What strikes me reading this book is how much impact negotiation has on our everyday lives. For instance, if I learn how to negotiate better with my family I can have a happier life. If I learn how to negotiate better with my workmates I can have a more relaxed workplace existence.

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As a kid, I loved to argue with my family. I loved to get into a heated debate, with each side fighting for their points. I firmly believed I was right all the time (of course, ha ha) and therefore it was in my best interests to present my points vehemently. I thought if I was just willful enough, they would see my point of view.

When I tried to do this with strangers or co-workers, I was met with anger. Presenting my position seemed to be the quickest way to tick people off. For example, if someone asked me the question, "Why are you a vegetarian" my response would be to present my position:

- what reasons I used when I chose a vegetarian lifestyle
- what things I saw (and continued to see) that encouraged me to choose this lifestyle
- the benefits of this choice that I saw (and continued to see) for myself

This kind of stuff would really get people angry. They would fight and argue with me, as if what I had said to them was an attack. They would yell, or otherwise express anger, and try to tell me what I was doing was wrong. I have always had a hard time understanding why people would react this way.
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This book I'm reading about the ways to negotiate has made me see these interactions differently. If a person is starting a conversation by stating a position, according to the book, this person's comments can be interpreted as a personal attack or an attack on ideas. It is (as a result) natural for a person to respond to an 'attack' with a defensive posture, and to get angry. Not that everyone responds this way! But many people do.

What does all this have to do with empathy? Well one of the ways that the book talks about approaching a possible conflict is to have empathy for the other person. To start by trying to see things from their point of view, to put yourself in their shoes. Here's how I would redo the above 'vegetarian' conversation with empathy and with the ideas in this book:

Q: "Why are you a vegetarian?"

A: "That's an interesting question, I get that quite a lot. I'm wondering what is driving your question, can you tell me more about your understanding of vegetarianism?"

What are your hot-button topics, what ideas have you tried to present that have set people 'off''?


P.S. I've been asked recently 'how's Lucy' and I would just like to say that she's handled the winter just great. The ground is getting soft and her claws are getting muddy, but she seems to love being outside on these early spring days.

Janet

My hobby - Cake Decorating

In the last few years I've picked up a hobby. I decorate cakes and cupcakes. My husband bought me a decorating class as a birthday present, and I've been hooked ever since. I have spent a few very enjoyable afternoons making buttercream frosting and sugar flowers.

This week all of my free time was spent building a sweet sixteen birthday cake. As per the girls' request (this was a 2-person joint event) my only requirement was that it be vanilla with raspberry filling. I also know, from previous experience, that at least one of the girls was not that fond of fondant. So a buttercream frosting it was!

Although I'm comfortable making cakes from scratch I decided to use a box mix for the cakes themselves. It saves a bit of time, I have a box mix I like very much, and that way I was able to focus my mental energies on the decorations.

Here some photos of the finished cake:

It was a three-layer cake on the inside. The raspberries are real, the roses are sugarpaste and the gold numbers and ribbon are fondant.

I really love making sugarpaste flowers, that they are pretty, and delicate, and yummy. It feels great taking a flower (which is already a fabulous thing) and then kicking it up a notch by making it sweet and edible candy. Plus my favorite memory of the birthday party was seeing the two birthday girls enjoying their flowers, one petal at a time.

I'm no professional or expert, I know that. When I look at the cake I see the flaws. I'm trying to get better, and every time I make a cake or a set of cupcakes I feel like I'm getting better. So part of the reason I made this cake was selfish - I would like to have practice, and this gave me a perfect opportunity.

However the big reason I made this cake and put everything I've got into it, is that I love these girls and I wanted them to have the best cake I could possibly make for them. They deserve it. Happy Birthday girls!

Have you made anything for someone you love? Did it come out how you hoped? Please tell me in the comments (feel free to comment anonymously).

Janet

P.S. I have to give extra props to the cake school that taught me how to attempt making smooth looking buttercream - thank you Melissa! And to Lisa, my excellent instructor in cake making and stacking, thank you!

Staying Positive

Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far to this blog, through your comments and support. Please keep it up!

There are things in my life that I do when I'm happy, like doing yoga on my Wii FIT, hugging my family, or dancing. When I'm sad I might watch a really good romantic movie, like French Kiss, or a really bad one, like Only You. I might eat bad food, like instant Ramen. I'm pretty sure that chocolate counts as something I do when I'm both happy AND sad. :P

I actually find it amusing to catch myself doing one of these things and realizing HEY I must be feeling GOOD today, why else would I be Vogue-ing in the kitchen?

What do you do when you are feeling good?

Travel

Yesterday was all about family. Today, I'll tell you a little bit about the places I've visited. I've not traveled very much (yet):

USA and Canada: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maine, Florida, North Carolina, New Mexico, California, Niagara Falls, Toronto

And

Aruba

UPDATE #2: I think North Carolina was very interesting, for the food. I've had both really good food experiences there and really bad. The really good food was a vegetarian meal at, of all places, a traditional meaty BBQ. I had side dish after side dish and it was totally amazing.

The really bad food was at a wedding; they served us paper cups of kool-aid and dried out tiny cakes. Eeew.

Where have you traveled? What was the most interesting place you visited, and why?

UPDATE #1: A friend of mine who flies his own small plane shared this with me. I think this is a great way to see the world. He's flown as far north as Nashua, NH and Ra-ra-ra-Rochester, and as far south as Ocean City, MD. I wonder what Nashua, NH is like? According to Wikipedia it's the second largest city in the state.

"a Google Map that has a marker for every airport in my logbook. I've been other places, but I don't think getting to any of those was as much fun."