Poultry in Motion

Did I mention I've been in a show?  Poultry in Motion is a fun take-off on the Chicken Little Story, and I'm playing Henny Penny!  We've been having a ton of fun, and today are our last two performances.

Yes, two.  Children's shows are under an hour, and so we have two performances each day.

At any rate, immediately following our final performance and the subsequent strike of our set will be the cast party.  Waaaaaaaaaay back during rehearsals, I "called" cupcakes.  Glad I did, too, since someone else asked to be the cupcake-bringer a day or two ago.  But see, I'd seen these, and just knew they were too perfect.  Chicks for Chicken Little, right?!

So... my rendition.

I didn't burnish the edges to make them all smooth, but I think they're adorable.  It would've been tough, because underneath the fondant "cracked shell," I used vanilla buttercream instead of a fondant disc on my chocolate cupcakes.

I measured and cut my fondant circles with a wine glass that was just about the right size, and cut the "cracks" in advance of placing them on the cupcakes.  It made them a little more difficult to transfer to the cakes, but if I'd cut them on the buttercream, they'd have stuck.

Then it was just a matter of making yellow and orange fondant, forming the body and head balls, making those tiny cone beaks, and doing the combs.  The hardest part?  The combs.  The fondant wanted to stick to the knife and drag.

And then, since I don't have a black food marker, just the "bright" colors, I gave them all nice blue eyes.

Adorable, right?  Adorable.

Shared with:

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

(... often go astray.)

This turned out to be not bad, despite my frustration levels and snappishness.  And Eric was great about it.

See, we again held our annual Mardi Gras in June party, which I posted about last year.  It's always a big hit, and the guest list keeps getting bigger and better.  This year, in addition to my traditional southern pecan pies, I decided to try my first ever topsy turvy cake, since I'd taken that class.

I knew I'd need practice.  Thing is, covering a styrofoam practice round with fondant is a lot easier than actual cake.  And with a topsy turvy cake, the tiers are cut with the sides angled inward.  Not easy.  But I want to be able to do cool cakes for my nephew's birthday and other events.  So this was my first, and we'll sort of consider it practice.

It started off well.  I chose red velvet, since it's Eric's favorite.

I piled up the layers into the two tiers, and cut 'em to shape.

So far so good.  Then I filled and crumbcoated them with a cream cheese frosting recipe I got from this blog.

And therein lies the problem.  Not the frosting or the recipe, because holy crow was it good!  The problem is that it's a very wet type of frosting.  And fondant just loves to absorb moisture.  So... yeah.  There I am trying to cover the cake with fondant I colored and rolled out nice and thin, and it's getting all wet and sticky while I'm trying to get it to lie smooth and flat.

Frustration makes me snippy.

And Eric was really so awesome.  He kept getting things for me, and taking trash away, and asking what he could do to help.  And I was kinda snarly.

See, this was my plan.

Nice sharp edges, which if you look at the cut, shaped, but uncovered cake, were successful at the time.  Feathers, beads, a mask.  And those squiggles were to be fleur de lis.

Yeah.

In the end, I fought through, and came up with this...

Not as smooth as I wanted, obviously, and I got too tired to do beads for the top tier too.  The fleur de lis were a little misjudged.  And it got kind of ... bulbous rather than sharp.  Well, I tried.  And it's not bad, I suppose, for a first attempt.  I am, I have to say, really happy with my gum paste mask and feathers.  This was the first time I ever made or used gum paste.  And I'm happy with the Mardi Gras beads around the bottom.

Just... I need practice.  I know that.  And never again will I do cream cheese frosting with fondant.

It was a hit anyway, friends wouldn't let me cut it until they took a sufficient number of photos.  And of course they devoured it.  We were left with this.

Don't worry, we ate it.  But what of the leftover cake, the parts I had to cut off to shape it?  No worries, those became red velvet cake pops!

Yum!

Leave it to me to start with dessert first.  We did have crawfish too, I promise.  What's Mardi Gras without crawfish?

And etouffee, still my favorite food in the world.  It was such a hit last year that we ordered five pounds of tail meat this year instead of one.

Also devoured.

And drinks and platters, corn and potatoes.

In addition to the bubbles, balls, and sidewalk chalk we had for the kiddos...

... my friend Emilie pulled out her face painting kit.  There was one request for a tiger, though, so Emilie suggested I take that one.

He is my friend's son, and was hysterical.  He proceeded to run around the party roaring at everyone!

And to finish up, the photo I call "Aftermath of a Party."

Another success, in the end!

Happy Secretary's Day!

Yes, yes, I know many people are calling this Administrative Assistant's Day.  But see, I got admonished once for that, by a secretary at a prior firm.  Her take on it was that "legal secretary" is a perfectly good and respectable title, and she'd earned it.  I tend to agree, and don't particularly see the title "secretary" as anything negative.  As a lawyer, I know I could never practice nearly as well, efficiently, or effectively without a good secretary.

My firm doesn't have good secretaries, though.  It's got awesome secretaries.

So since this is my first Secretary's Day with this firm, I decided to go personal and general at the same time.  I'm giving each staff member a different floral card I myself made from photographs I took.  The tough thing about them is that they're blank inside, and I'm not so great at writing out cards like that.  Shocking, considering how verbose I am, huh?

For the gift?  I baked a cake!  Chocolate fudge cake with homemade vanilla buttercream.

I had to ice the cake and then fridge it so I could smooth it down before using... betcha guessed it... fondant!  My very first real fondant cake!

To decorate it, I made tiny flowers and leaves.  Each flower has a center of a single sugar pearl, and the large ones I brushed with silver pearl dust.  Each one is a little different, as they're hand curled, both flowers and leaves.  And I used color powders to tint the white vanilla fondant into pink, purple, and yellow flowers, and green leaves.

Since I did a square cake and really liked the idea of a gift box, I also made a yellow and green marbled bow.

Then it was time to smooth the buttercream and cover the cake.  I decided to leave the base fondant white.

Once it was covered in fondant, I added green pearl dust swirls and a green and yellow marbled (and textured) ribbon.

Then the bow, which looked pretty nifty once on the cake, if I do say so myself.

And then all those flowers and leaves I made?  The majority of them ended up on the cake.  I might've missed the mark with regard to the "less is more" school of thought, but considering the fact that this is my very first real fondant cake, I think I did a pretty good job.

Can't wait to bring it in tomorrow!

Shared with: