The Chair Cake - Learning Lessons the Hard Way

I love my mother-in-law, Mary Jo.  I'm not just saying that in case she reads this... I really do.  She's been very supportive of my cake venture, and I truly appreciate that.  I'm SOOOOO appreciative of EVERYONE who's been supportive.  


I've been planning her birthday cake for quite a while because her birthday was a month ago, and we were supposed to visit her that weekend.  Long story short, our dog ended up needing surgery and we had to postpone our trip until now.  Don't worry ... he's fine.  Our bank account hurts worse than he does.  Ahhhh, the joys of having kids & pets.  


Here's where the lessons learned started.  Because we had to cancel at the last minute, I had already baked her cake.  So, I freezed it.  I don't freeze my cakes ... I don't have any experience freezing cakes ... I don't have any experience working with frozen cakes.  I figured it was the perfect cake to see how frozen cakes taste/decorate.  


Mary Jo is a very talented seamstress.  She owns a sewing company called Divine Threads in the Myrtle Beach area.  My husband and I thought it was only fitting to make a chair cake for her because reupholstering furniture is one of her many talents.  Here is my inspiration picture from cakecentral.com :

I knew it wouldn't end up even close, but it was a start.


I can see that this "lesson learned" post is getting long, so here's my LESSON LEARNED #1 - TAKE PICTURES ALONG THE WAY.  Yes, it's annoying for me to do my work with a stop & go mentality, but how much better would this post be with pictures?  I could show you my complete and utter failure from start to finish.  


So, the decorating actually went along very smoothly.  The kids didn't cooperate fully, so I ended up being more pressed for time than I thought I would be.  I went to bed being relatively happy with the cake.  There were some details that I just couldn't get done.


I woke up to this ... 
Husband - "Hey Brianna, wake up.  Ummm ... you need to fix mom's cake because it fell over during the night"
Me - (Jumping out of bed) "What the BEEP?  What the BEEP happened?  You've got to be kidding me (running down the stairs) BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP (seeing the cake)."


It was 6:30 am, and we needed to leave by 7:00, so there was no fixing this cake.  This is where LESSON LEARNED #1 would come in handy because I'd love to show you how I learned the rest of the lessons.


LESSON LEARNED #2 - CAKES BUCKLE UNDER WEIGHT ... DEAL WITH IT!  I thought I was being clever when I was putting it together.  I used a 10" round on bottom, and then cut an 8" round  to use as the back and then some extra pieces for the arms.  I held up the back with a few dowel rods.  The bottom cake just wasn't strong enough to hold up the upright part of the cake.


LESSON LEARNED #3 - PREVIOUSLY FROZEN CAKES ARE WET.  Those dowel rods that I was sure would support the upright part of the cake, didn't have a firm place to anchor into.  Putting them into a "wet" cake was like trying to stop an avalanche with a tree.  It never had a chance.


I really think it was a perfect storm of many things - wet cake, heavy cake (again, thanks to it being frozen), using a hard base (instead of cardboard circles - my dowels weren't anchored to anything), and inserting my dowels too close to the edge of the cake.  


So, LESSON LEARNED #4 - USE YOUR BRAIN.  I know I wasn't an engineering major in college (maybe if I HAD been, I wouldn't be unemployed at the moment, but that's another blog post), but I know now to think about weight of material, placement of material, and reinforcement of joints.  I'm sure there's some physics formula for this, but I don't know what it is.  So, I'll make my own formula - wet cake + heavy cake + misplaced dowels x forgetting to use my brain = cake that falls apart (again, back to LESSON LEARNED #1 - wouldn't a picture of the fallen cake be GREAT here?)  Cake that falls apart / crushed expectations = UNHAPPY CUSTOMER.  I don't like the thought of an unhappy customer, so I'm very glad I learned on family.


That leads me to LESSON LEARNED #5 - LEARN YOUR LESSONS ON FAMILY & CLOSE FRIENDS.  While learning lessons the hard way HURTS, it would hurt a whole lot more if you ruined an event cake for a customer.  I learned that I will never try out new techniques on customers.


So, we got to Mary Jo's and she loved the cake ... even though it was in two pieces.  My husband held up the fallen piece so we could show her, and get some pictures (FINALLY!)

It was just the back of the chair that came off ... you can see the buckle along the back of the cushion.


LESSON LEARNED #6 - FAMILY WILL ALWAYS TELL YOU THAT THEY LOVE IT!  It's nice to know that sometimes people just appreciate the thought and time you put into something special for them.  


How did it taste?  YUMMY!

Wedding Shower Cake

Remember when I said that Caryn ordered 2 cakes in March?  The second one was just as much fun as the St. Patty's Day Cake.  This cake was a bridal shower cake for Emily, a woman in her office.  Now, I'm pretty used to making kids' cakes and airplane cakes these days, so I was more than ready to show my girliness (is that a word?) on this cake.  

The bottom tier was Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake with a White Chocolate Frosting and the top tier was Vanilla Bean Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting.  Both tiers were covered in white fondant and had a black satin ribbon around the base.  A large pink gumpaste flower was offset on the front.  Here's a closer look at that.

The top of the cake said Showers of Happiness Emily

I loved how this cake looked overall, and Caryn said the staff LOVED the cake.  That's all I can ask for.

Luck of the Irish

I'm not Irish, but I do consider myself very lucky to work with Caryn.  She contacted me to make TWO cakes in March. The first was for her Irish husband on St. Patrick's Day.  Poor Bob ... everyone always forgets that he's Irish, since the rest of the family is Italian.  So, they make sure to celebrate his heritage on St. Patrick's Day.

I emailed Caryn a few ideas, and she chose my favorite option.  I was SO EXCITED!!!!  It was a shamrock with a rainbow & pot of gold.

Here's how it turned out:

A close up of the rainbow & coins

Caryn said everyone oohed & awed over the cake, and that it was delicious.  It was a Vanilla Bean Cake with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting.  

Third Time's a Charm

I really thought it would be WAY easier to keep up with this blogging thing, especially because it's new and exciting.  It's just not always easy to find the time to download my pictures, edit my pictures,  and write a blog post.  Oh well ... I'll keep working on it getting things posted right away.

The good news is that I've been very busy since my last post.

I'll start with the cake I did after Tanya's 2nd airplane cake.  It was ... another airplane cake.  Yep ... I made a version of the same cake 3 weeks in a row.  This time it was for one of Hope's friends, Kathy.  Kathy's husband is a recreational pilot, and she wanted the exact same concept as Tanya's cake.

It turned out pretty well.

I really hope they enjoyed it!

Thrice as Nice

My friend Hope is going to be an auntie very soon!  She asked me to design not one, but three cakes for Baby Audrey's shower.  Each cake is based on the invitation design.  Here's what I had to work with:

FABULOUS, right?  

We decided to copy the I (stars), R (flowers), and L (stripes).  We'll also tie in the pink & white polka dotted B in a couple places.  She also chose some amazing cake flavors - Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Almond Cake (tinted pink) with White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (tinted a darker pink), and Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake with Fresh Raspberry Filling and Poured Chocolate Ganache Frosting.

These cakes turned out better than I could have imagined.  Well ... just don't look at the "stars" one too closely ... I had a fondant mishap at 5:00 am, and didn't have time to start over.

 

Hope was really pleased with the cakes.  Here are some pictures from the shower:

The shower looked fabulous.  I hope a good time was had by all!  Thanks for letting me be part of your special day.

BEST COMPLIMENT EVER!!!!!!

So, I woke up on Thursday, with every intention of dropping my son off at school, picking up the rest of the groceries for my TWO big orders this weekend, and getting my butt to kickboxing before picking my son up at 1:00.  Well, the universe was against me that day ... I forgot to pack my son's lunch, my printer ran out of ink, and I couldn't find some much needed ingredients.  UGH!!!!!  I just wanted to go to kickboxing ... was that really too much to ask?

Somewhere in all that mess, I got a phone call ... from Tanya (the pilot).  She said she LOVED the cake I made for her last weekend and wanted me to make an exact replica for her actual birthday.  WHAT!?  Of course I said yes!!!  Who cares that I already have two other orders that I've obsessed over for at least a week.  It was the BEST COMPLIMENT I've ever received about my cakes.  Having someone so pleased with their surprise cake that they wanted another one!

I was also happy because I had an opportunity to fix the "mistakes" from the last cake.  Seriously ... don't make me point them out to you.  Don't pretend you didn't cringe at that bright blue airplane.

I'm so glad I got to redo this cake ... and meet Tanya!!!  She was so sweet and appreciative!  I hope it tasted as good the 2nd time around.  I think it looked much better.

Out of This World

Do you know why I LOVE it when Theresa calls?  Because she's going to ask me to do a cake.  Not just any cake ... a spectacular cake.  Of course, she starts by saying, "I just need a small 8-inch round cake for my sister-in-law's birthday."  Followed by, "She's a pilot, she flies all over the world, and she loves chocolate.  Did I mention she's a pilot?"  (blah, blah, blah ... more stuff about her SIL, but I was only partly listening because my mind was already coming up with an idea.)  Then, she finishes with, "Can I get this by tomorrow afternoon?"

SURE!!!!!!!  Luckily, I didn't have any other orders that weekend, so I was able to squeeze her in.

So, my idea was an 8-inch round Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake (seriously people, if you haven't tried this, you HAVE TO!!) with a chocolate mousse filling and a ganache frosting.  But I can't just hand Theresa a basic 8-inch chocolate cake.  OH NO ... not when her SIL is a pilot!!!  I decided to put a half circle cake on top of the 8-inch and draw the world with colored White Chocolate Buttercream.  I also thought there needed to be a fondant plane up in the sky.

Here's how it turned out:

Word on Facebook is that Tanya loved the cake ... I sure hope so!!!  Happy Birthday Tanya!