Cake Update

Just a quick update on the cake.

Putting it together was pretty easy, as I expected, however I did learn a few things:

1. I cannot cut a straight line (you cut a little off the bottom of the ball so that it can stand).  Technically this is not something I just learned however it was reinforced by the leaning ball of cake.  Who knew balls could lean.
2. I now understand why the pamphlet suggested a firm cake.  When you start putting frosting on the flat part of the bottom sphere (basically the middle of the two layer cake), the edges start flaring out.  I thought I had a fairly firm cake but I may need to rethink that.  I will see how it holds up tonight.
3. Using store bought frosting (hey, it was a test cake and I didn’t feel like making homemade frosting at 10p) will not work.  It is just too soft to smooth out.  My normal buttercream should be fine.  It normally smoothes out beautifully.
4. Wow it is a lot smaller than I was thinking (and I was thinking it was going to small).  It is hard to look at the small ball and imagine it takes 4 1/2 cups of cake mix (1 box).  My plan of making a sheet cake to be a Bakugan or Pokemon card will definitely have to be implemented.
5. I think my idea of putting frosting on the bottom layer prior to flipping it ‘right side’ up is the easiest way to get the majority of the frosting neatly placed.
6. Overall, I think I can work with this. 

And no, there aren’t any pictures.  I didn’t even try to frost it neatly and right now it looks like a white ball/blob.  Although I was thinking if I had some brown edible paint to go with the orange that I already own I could make an awesome Jupitar.

Now the full-on stress of making the decorations can begin.

This is why I make practice cakes

This year we have finally moved away from the Star Wars themed cake (Yea!, I mean…moving on) and instead I will be making a Pokeball.  This I think I can do (lets hope).  It is a cake in the shape of a sphere and has only three colors.  The top is red, the bottom is white and there is a black line around the middle.  K had asked for a Bakugan cake, which I had agreed to in some not-so-rare moment of insanity, but upon further consideration I not so subtly hinted that maybe a Pokeball cake would be nicer.  To give you an idea of the difference in complexity here is a visual representation.
     

Pokeball                                            Bakugan

Oh my gosh, while looking for an image of a Pokeball to show you I discovered that there are actually several different levels of Pokeball which give you a greater chance of catching Pokemon.  They are all more complicated to create than the red/white/black version I’m doing.  We must keep this information from K.
So as I was saying; practice cake.
We went out this weekend and purchased the ball shaped cake pan and something just told me that I should make figuring out how that thing works a priority.  It is a good thing that I did.  Here is the result.
 
(Okay, this isn’t a very good picture.  You can’t tell that these are each half of the sphere.)
Also, apparently my oven is baking even more uneven than I thought. The one on the left, the one with all the stuff running down that you would think would be more than done, was still undercooked on the very top 1/4 inch in the center.  I discovered that when I cut the top of the cake off to make it flat.  I also had to bake them for almost twice the amount of time the pan stated.  Oh well, this is why I practice. 
I plan to put a generic, store bought frosting on it and then take it to Cub Scouts tomorrow.  I really don’t want a whole cake hanging out at the house for just me and boys to eat.  I figured the boys wouldn’t mind if it was store bought frosting and generic decorations.
Now off to do the actual assembly.  Wish me luck.

Fair Time

Last weekend was a busy one for me and the boys so I’m going to break it down into separate events.  We’ll pretend that will keep me from rambling. :)

It is Fair season around here and the Fair just down the road from us was in town, opening on August 27th.  K’s school was closed on Friday, August 28th so I was working from home and I happened to get off at noon on that Friday, so I thought FAIR!

I haven’t been to the Fair since K was about D’s age (around 3.5) and I decided that both of the boys would have a good time and that if I planned well we could have fun and not totally ruin our budget.  I whined at my Mom and convinced her to go with us, even though she was headed out of town at 6a the next morning.  Sometimes I’m so mean. :)

The boys, Mom and I all headed off to the fair about 1p.  The boys were both so excited.  It was adorable.  They were also both extremely good and excited to be there the entire time which made the trip really fun for me.   For full disclosure D threw a minor fit at the end, but considering it was 6p and he had been going full force and hadn’t had a nap I was okay with that.

We started off with a tour of the horses, they had the big draft horses in that day and  I thought the boys would like to see how huge those horses can get.  It was great because this year they allowed us to pet the horses.  Both of the boys thought it was great that they were able to touch these huge horses.  We even met a horse that does Search and Rescue work for two of the counties up here.

No pictures of the boys actually petting a horse.  I’m not talented enough to hold D while he pets a horse and take a picture of the event at the same time. :)

After that we wandered back past the rides and games.  The boys were amazed at some of the rides.  The spinning, dropping, going upside down, etc.  Of course, K wanted no part of them and D wanted to go on them all.  Both of them did want to play all the games on the midway and ride most of the non-spinning/upside down/dropping rides.  They got very upset when I explained to them that they only had so many tickets and we should see all the rides before they choose.  In retrospect I should have reallocated the money to buy them each an unlimited ride wristband but I really didn’t think they would be that excited to ride the rides.  As it was we ended up doing the same ride twice, going to an identical ride with different cars and then doing the fun house.  I felt bad for K because the rides in that area were really to young for him but he wasn’t patient enough to watch D ride the rides and wait until D was done so that we could go back to the bigger rides for K.  Oh well, they both had fun (until we ran out of tickets) and that was the goal for the day so all was good.

 

After the rides we continued our tour of the animals, played on some peddle tractors, went through the play farmers market, visited the animals in the petting area, visited some of the exhibits and then decided to explore the food options.  All week I had been craving an Elephant Ear (even though I’ve never had one) however my inner cheapness rose up and wouldn’t let me spend $5.74 on a piece of fried dough with cinnamon and sugar on it.

 

We purchased scones (a tradition, so nummy), two piroshkies(another fair tradition for my family, again so nummy), corn on the cob on a stick, peach cobbler (for my Mom.  She was all disappointed because it ended up being canned peaches),  and cotton candy.  Not too bad considering it fed four people.

The boys had never been allowed to have cotton candy before and were so excited to have a bag (although, once again proving my boys are odd, they were more excited about the corn on the cob on a stick, I really should have purchased two of those).  There is still a bag of cotton candy in the house.  They ate a about two pinches a piece, were all excited about having it, and then didn’t want any more.  I’m pretty sure that cotton candy doesn’t go bad so I’m sure I’ll be bringing it out as a treat option occasionally for a bit.  (note to self – I haven’t seen the bag of cotton candy in the last few days.  I wonder if J ate it)

After the food the boys went through the fun house.  I was such a bad Mom.  The beginning of the fun house is the glass maze.  The boys go rushing in there and suddenly kept running into dead ends.  So K turns around to start at the beginning again, but he took a wrong a turn on slammed (I do mean slammed) face first into one of the partitions.  I was standing there watching and had to turn my head so that he wouldn’t see me laughing.  It was just too hilarious.

After a brief stop at the midway for the boys to play a game (they each won a really cute stuffed turtle) we decided to head home.  We rode the tractor people mover out to our car.  The boys thought that was an awesome last ride for the day.

The day after the fair, it was a birthday party at a lake.  Such fun.  Pictures of it soon.

Oh, I don’t think I posted about Cub Scout movie night.  I’ll have to think about that.  Plus we have the first day of school coming up next week.