Cake Drama!!!

I have already posted a blog about Maddie's actual birthday which was Tues June 23 and also about her party that was on Sat June 27th. On Fri the day before her party, I sponge rolled her hair again and then sent her to bed. I had a lot of things to do to get ready for the party. My biggest task was to finish the cake. So about this cake...I had decided years ago that I wanted to make my own cakes for the kids on their birthdays until they were old enough to say that they didn't want me to make them anymore b/c they were to embarrassed of them. I will say it and I'm not ashamed to, but I'm not a cake decorator. It just simply isn't a talent that I have. I hope to gain it someday but I haven't yet. But I did ask Maddie, months ago, what kind of cake would she like for her birthday. I knew it was going to be something to do with princesses, and it was. She asked for a Princess Castle Cake. I thought OH BOY!! What am I going to do. Well luckily I had lots of time to research this and try to find something that I thought I could pull off. You wouldn't believe how many of these I looked at and how much time I put in just trying to get some ideas. I was so nervous about doing it but finally I was feeling confident enough that I was getting excited. About a month before, I drew up my ideas and then wrote out everything I'd need to purchase. Of course along the way somethings changed from what I orginally had and also as I learned more about all of it, I realized that this and that wasn't what I was thinking. This leads me to the Thursday before the party. I went ahead and made to cakes. I know how things go sometimes and I wanted to start early enough that if I needed to go to plan B I would still have time. So Thursday I baked the cakes...5 cakes to be exact. 2 square ones, 2 (6 in) round cakes, and one large muffin/cake. I went ahead and icied what I could then went to bed. Then Friday came and I started on the rest of the icing. It took me almost all day just to "dot" half the bottom layer. I had to stop to do this and that for the kids and b/c my hand would cramp up and b/c the icing would turn into mush. OHHHHH, it was so stinking time consuming. I was thinking, this better be worth it. So Friday night after the kids were in bed, I asked Jason to come and help me so I could get this cake finished before the next morning. He did do the rest of the "dotting" which was done by a piping tip. The reason I was doing it this way was to get the look of stone, I don't know if anyone could tell that that's what it was suppose to look like. But oh well!!! So about this "dotting"...ok we all know that men and women are different but geez!! I did appreciate Jason helping me and in the end I guess it didn't really matter but he didn't do it the way I would have liked. I was taking my time so that it looked smooth and nice but Jason was just squeezing it on there and being all messy. But that's a man for ya, and like I said I don't think anyone really even noticed with all the other stuff on it. So after all the "dotting" was over I melted vanilla chips and dipped the sugar cones in it and rolled them in pink sprinkles and added them to the other ice cream cones. Then I rolled out the fondant and colored it and cut it into the shapes that I needed. It was actually the fun part of doing the cake b/c it was like playing with play-doh. Fondant doesn't taste very good but it is edible. I only added fondant windows and the door and a big number 3. Then the last thing I did that night was adding the peeble walkway. I was up until 3 am that night and boy was I exhausted. I was so exhausted that I just collasped on the couch and then I was up at 7 am finishing up on the small things like adding the coconut for grass and the flags and Princesses. After all this and all the time it took to make it, it was so worth it after hearing Maddie says, Oh Mommy it's so pretty!!! So I guess it'll take on another one next year. Or maybe I'll do something for Jason's b-day in a few weeks.