And I'm back....

If you remember my last post, I was kinda worn thin on cake decorating. Honestly I think it was more of being worn out in general. I had lots of cakes, which was fantastic, but I also had lots of other things going on. I've got my day job... then I might have also gotten a night job baking... and we might have started a little home renovation in the midst of everything else... After saying that, I'm sure you have no pity for me whatsoever. Because I'm the one who chose to work another job and I'm the one who came up with the idea to renovate our pantry. And I kinda feel like a pitiful person saying all of this because I know there are moms out there doing it all. Working, taking care of one or more children, managing their home, doing their dream job on the side etc etc. So I don't quite know what to say. I'm not hear to whine, but explain what happened and admit I can't do it all. (Hopefully you magically obtain those superhero powers when you give birth. I have a feeling I'll need them later in life.)

Pretty much what was going on was that I was working all of the time; whether at my "real" job or my baking job or my "cake job." With working at night, my schedule was completely turned upside down. I had been going to bed at 9 pm (no, I'm not ashamed :) and getting up at 4:30am (ok, not everyday, but 3 out of 7, but the point is early). All of the sudden, I'm staying up till midnight or later. My body was confused. For at least a month I was exhausted every morning. Even when I had had plenty of rest.

On top of that, I had cakes. So if I got home from work at 11 pm... there was still more to be done. Over the past two months I have stayed up somewhere between 2-6am. The night/morning I stayed up till 6am, I ended up getting to see my hubby off for work (one perk). I slept 2 and a half hours then was up to finish the cake. I understand that happens sometimes, but the fact that I wasn't getting started on things till midnight is not really what I prefer. I don't want to come off sounding that I'm not willing to put in the time to do this because I still do love cake decorating, but I don't think this is the best way to go about it.

The worst part of all: I didn't get to spend my evenings with my husband. We were long distance for 3 and a half years. I only got to see him, maybe, once a month. We've been married almost 3 years now and I still cherish the time we get to spend together. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices, but this situation is completely under my control and I can change it. I love baking and decorating cakes, but my husband definitely ranks higher.

Anyway, blah blah blah... we finished our pantry!

before

after

I love it so much. It is amazing! The pictures might not help much, but in the room that you see in the after picture there was this tiny pantry (in the before pic). That was the storage. So we knocked it out and made the whole room storage!! I'm not going to lie, it was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. We ended up redoing sheetrock, painting, ceiling, tile... whew! And my husband did most of the work, seeing as how I was usually otherwise occupied. I helped as much as I could though. I painted! And I did some caulk work (ironically since it was a lot like icing a cake. It's got to be smooth). This weekend I was able to rearrange a lot and I think most of everything has found a home. There will always be readjusting, but I think we're settled for now. 

I finally got a break. We hit the beach last weekend for 3 marvelous days. I hope to move closer to my family one day, but the greatest thing about where we are now: close to the beach :)

Of course, there are always cakes to do also...

Hopefully you can't tell the ones that I was rushed with or that I am not that happy with. Is it bad to admit that I'm not happy with my cake? I just feel I could've done better on some. Sometimes you encounter annoying issues such as lumps of powdered sugar in your buttercream! (I started using Domino's p.s. because it's 10x powdered; therefore no sifting. No problems until recently. No clue what the problem is. I sifted yesterday just to be safe. Annoying but the result is worth it). Or like really sticky fondant... turns out fondant can expire. Who knew? haha... I will say I'm happy with that last cake there. Simple but just how I wanted it. I think I was able to get the icing pretty smooth and a good shape for a square cake :) It's amazing what a difference it makes working without stress. 

I can get discouraged easily. I get really jealous at looking at other's cakes and their just amazing (example: shebakescakes. On her fb she said she started two years ago. She is amazing! I love looking at her cakes - when I don't hate her for how good she is :) But it's important not to compare. What good will it do? I printed out a bunch of pictures (I hadn't printed any cake pictures in over a year).  Looking at them, I can tell I have improved. Maybe not as quickly as others, but oh well. I have work I am proud of and I plan to just get better! So my inspiration is back! Would it be ok to quit my jobs and just decorate cakes at home?? Hmm... maybe one day...

Wedding Cake No. 3

Another wedding cake done. Whew. I've hit a wall... I cannot believe I'm about to say this... I don't want to think about cakes. I don't want to make one. I don't really want to see one either. I want a clean kitchen and I want a free night. A night to relax with my husband. Scratch that: several nights to relax with my husband. I want to go to bed at a decent hour. I want to be free of the incredible amount of stress I have felt lately.

Do not misunderstand me. I am pretty sure I won't be giving up my hobby. But I need a break. I think I've taken on a little too much recently. I hate to admit that too. Since April 30th, I have done at least one cake (or cookies or cake pops) a week. That might not sound like much and it wasn't for a couple of months. It's just all piled up. In roughly a month I have done 3 wedding cakes/groom's cakes. That's a really big deal to me. I'm very glad I had the opportunities and do not regret accepting them. But I don't remember the last time I've felt that much stress.

I just need to clean up the kitchen and finish this pantry construction. Did I mention we are redoing our pantry? It'll be very helpful when done, but it's just more going on in our house. But my hubby has done an amazing job!

I just have to hang in there for 2 more weeks and I get to escape for a weekend! Yay!

Anyway, on to these cakes... I've got a few random pictures.

Here's the enormous 14". Notice how I've worked it out so the cake is cooling on all 3 cooling racks. I probably need some larger ones. Also note the time. 2:40. That's a.m.

This is "orange" velvet cake! The groom's cake was an Auburn theme and red velvet has a close resemblance to Alabama. So why not make it orange? I'm not sure how much I really liked that color, but it was done and it had a purpose so hopefully it went over well.

The bride never decided on a design so I got to choose. We had planned to do a 4 tier round cake. I was excited about this because the last two wedding cakes I did were alternating shaped tiers. That's fine, but I was looking forward to doing an all round cake. I saw the bride on Monday and she asked if I could do the alternating shapes. Whatever the bride wants! Fortunately it was supposed to feed the same amount of guests as the July wedding cake I did. So I already knew the sizes to do and I happened to have a 8" square cake dummy. Perfect! I tested out my design on the cake dummy a couple days before.

I really liked it. Of course, I didn't think about the 14" square would (hypothetically) be the same height so I couldn't make the decoration any bigger because that would make it taller. Fortunately, I think it turned out alright.

Here's the fun with Cricut Cake.

But I was able to figure out how to get it to cut nicely. Isn't it wonderful?! :)

Wondering about that groom's cake? Here you are...

That's cream cheese icing. Have I said I hate c.c. icing? One day we'll become friends. Hopefully. I have to give it some credit though. It didn't fall off the cake. Yay!

Tiger Stripes

The making of the stripes

If you've paid attention to the weather (which I normally don't, ha) there's something going on in the gulf. Results: constant rain.

Here are the cakes, ready to go!

(The big one had a garbage bag ready to go)

Thank goodness the rain cooled down the temps.

And my sweet hubs pulled my car as close to our front door as possible. Soon after I finished everything, the rain let up and we were off! And we were ahead of schedule. That's the way to do it!

The rain didn't let up when we got there though. The trash bag cover up worked well though. All turned out fine.

I really like the mirrored table.

All done and ready to relax!!

13 days till the beach :)

I hope it's not raining then!

The Home Stretch

Did I mention I went to bed at 5am Saturday morning? Fortunately, my sweet husband stayed up with me! It was nice not being up alone. But I couldn't sleep too late. I had to finish the wedding and groom's cake. They were baked and that was it. That's actually why I was up so late: baking the cakes. And working on the cookies.  So I set my alarm for 9 am. I got up and started at it again...

Yay for two mixers! I'm putting them to work!

I really don't have many pictures because I was too busy for that! But before I forget, let me tell you about making these cakes. The wedding cake was lemon cake. No problem. I have a great lemon cake recipe. Except I zested maybe 20 lemons. Umm... that takes a while. I zested. And zested some more. And then a little more. Whew!! Then I had to get the juice. I found every little cut in my hands. Ouch. Anyway... that's all. But making a 6" round, 8" square, and 12" round was a lot of lemon batter. 

Does anyone else have one of these? It is enormous!!

Oh and the wedding was an hour away. And it was supposed to be outside. Umm... it's crazy hot!! But they changed it the day of to an inside reception!! HOORAY! I had to be there at 6, but now that it is inside, I can get there early if I can. Sweet! That was the plan. Get there asap. The sooner I get there, the sooner I am done! So I bag cookies, make buttercream, ice the lemon cakes, make chocolate buttercream, ice the groom's cake, make the bow topper, dip 80 strawberries in chocolate, dowel stack the cakes, decorate, etc. 

The one positive of having no food at home. Plenty of room for cakes!

Well 5 pm rolls around (the time I wanted to leave) and I'm close to being done, but not quite. I start panicking. Oh my gosh I was incredibly nervous. Blah, blah, blah we head out at 5:30. Yuck. I hold the wedding cake in my lap. So nervous. Did I already mention that?  Finally we get there and it's a resort that we've never been to. We finally find where to go and set up. All good before the guests show up!!! Yay! 

Thank goodness for my phone camera :)

Close up shots

Now that you've seen the pictures... I got there and needed to fix a stripe on the front. It fell as soon as we pulled out of our house. No big deal. I put royal icing, buttercream, and chocolate buttercream piping bags in a bag just in case! Yeah... it didn't make it to the car. Fortunately the missing stripe isn't too noticeable. It was nice that the only one that fell was in the front! Ha!

And a few loops fell out of the bow, which I couldn't fix because no royal icing, but that part was in the back and not too big of a deal.

Also, the strawberries didn't harden. ugh! I practiced them! But of course the chocolate that I used then was sold out when I went to buy my supplies. So I bought a different type of chocolate. Yeah... I suppose that kind of chocolate will work but it didn't work as well as the first kind I had used. I put the strawberries on the cake but there were a lot left over that I was going to leave there. They were a mess. Oh well. Lesson learned. I haven't heard any complaints from anyone either. 

All in all, it's over. They were standing, in one piece, at the reception, on time (even if later than planned). Whew.

"For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength" (Phil. 4:13)

I've got another wedding and groom's cake to do this weekend. And we started renovating our pantry... haha this should be fun!

150 Mini Cakes

Ok, so they are 150 cake-shaped cookies. But I'm not sure that they didn't take longer than it would to make 150 mini cakes. Whew! These took days. I wish I had timed it. There was nothing "quick" about these cookies. Baking them took so long. Doesn't help that I have 3 cookie sheets and could get approximately 16 cookies in the oven at a time. Icing them took many hours. Decorating took less, but still a while. Then bagging them... more time. But you know what? I still enjoyed it! (Mostly. There was some stress, hoping I'd finish, hoping they'd dry, etc) I really like making cookies but they are time consuming. Here's my journey...

I knew I needed to bake them early on in the week. Monday night I needed to make the dough because it has to be refrigerated over night. I start after work, around 11 pm. Check this out:

That's sugar and shortening. Hint: it should be white.

See the black stuff on my fingers? Turns out you're not supposed to wash that beater in the dishwasher. Took me forever to find in the manual where it said that. It should really be somewhere on the beater. See I have an Artisan mixer that has a white beater that is dishwasher safe so I didn't even think about it. But when you put this in the dishwasher a bunch of black stuff rubs off... I don't know all the technicalities. Well it rubbed off into about 4 cups of sugar and 2 cups of shortening. No big deal. If you saw my previous post, I don't mind wasting large amounts of ingredients :(

So what do I do? This dough needs to be made. My other kitchenaid is smaller and full of chocolate icing in the fridge... I end up scrubbing the beater until all the black stuff is gone. Moral of this experience: I'm getting a new one. A nice one that scraps the bowl while mixing and is dishwasher safe. What's annoying? That Bed, Bath, and Beyond carries the beater I want... just not at any of the locations within 50 miles of me. Ugh. So it's ordered. Who knows when I'll get it. 

That's only 2/5ths of the dough I ended up using

Glad I got the 25lb bag of flour!

 The next day I begin to bake:

Did I mention I could only bake maybe 16 at a time? And it took me a while to get into my groove and get the cookies to bake how I liked them.

Oh and I usually had two pans in the oven at a time. I had just taken out 2 and was grabbing the third, not hot, pan to load it up with cookie dough... but I grabbed one of the really hot ones straight out of the oven! Yeah... Smooth right? I put my hand under cold water for a few minutes, then put it on ice. Fortunately that helped a lot! You can barely see where I got burned. You can see red on my ring and pinky finger and on the left of my palm. I know it doesn't look bad, but I get burned... often. It could've been very bad. The place on my ring finger started to blister, but fortunately none of them were bad. All better now!

First comes the outlining.

Then filling in the lines.

Then decorations!!

(sorry for the goofy sizing, but that way you can see the cookies better)

Surely you can see how there was no space in my kitchen. And I was still baking and working on cakes during this time... Fun!

All done!! Oh wait, they have to be bagged and tied too!

Honestly, Saturday morning when I woke up I needed to completely do the wedding and groom's cake: ice decorate, stack, make a bow, dip the strawberries etc. But I would've rather just sat down and bagged these cookies. I knew they were good to go and there was no more stress associated with these. Cakes were another story. Don't worry, I did work on the cakes :)

All done and ready to go. 

That's the fun adventure that were these cookies. I've had a few people ask me about cookies since I posted pictures so that's got to be a good sign!

Now the wedding and groom's cake :)