Anyone else having issues with blogger? UGH!
I made a lot of cakes lately and with doing so many in such a short amount of time, I wanted to make sure they were still very individual. And that I didn't make any of them look the same.
I've been wanting to get my hands on chocolate and play with it a little and see if I could manipulate it in ways the professionals do. I saw this once and wanted to try it. In the process I learned a few things:
1. A regular hershey's candybar from the store is NOT the kind of chocolate you want to do something like this.
2. Chocolate has a mind of it's own. If it wants to be manipulated, then, by its own choosing, it will do what you want it to do. And only then!
3. Use molding chocolate. It sets up faster and holds the shape and doesn't melt when you touch it like the hershey's did.
4.It's a lot like my photography skills. I go through a LOT of blurry pics to finally get a piece that looks focused and finished.
5. I WILL conquer chocolate. I'm am the superior being here!
After about 2 1/2 hours of melting chocolate, waiting for it to set up, and scraping enough scrolls, I finally got enough to wrap around this little 6inch cake. I'd LOVE to do this to a wedding cake! It would be gorgeous! And impressive! And a sure ticket straight to the looney bin! That would be a VERY time consuming project.
(Cake: chocolate with cool whip chocolate filling)
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It's been a long standing joke with my family and my dad. All my life, he's been a home remodeling contractor, fix-it handyman, roofer, flat-tire fixer, leaky drain reverse-r. And him hurtings hinmself getting hurt on the job.
I remember quite frequently he'd come home with some blood blister or purple finger. I'd ask him what happened and he'd say "I smacked it". Eventually the question evolved to "how'd you do that one?" pointing to the injured appendage with the resulting,... same response.
He found a shirt of a plump cartoon handyman who on it had just drilled a hole through his hand looking all goofy. He thought it was hillarious and he'd wear the shirt on occasion. A few years ago, he found this exact same shirt in the store and bought it for our oldest boy. "To help him remember grandpa."
Turning 60 CAN be a big deal, if there is someone there to make it a big deal. I'm kind of a big deal type of gal, so I chose to make it big by making a cake. The cake itself wasn't the "big" factor.. the theme, I so lovingly choose to immortalize in fondant, was. My dad isn't a "plump"y kind of person. The man can eat a whole burger joint and his shape remains the same. So this handsome little handyman was skinny. I molded the body around a wire "frame" to give it more support while he dried. I'm not a sculptor so I had to call in backup for the head/face. I have a very dear friend that amazingly turned a picture of my dad into a rosy cheeked, toothy grinning head, with perfectly parted hair. Just like my dad!
I however made the "wood" by coloring tan fondant with more brown food coloring. My husband had a hard time believing it wasn't real, until I dropped a completely dried piece on the floor and it shattered.
Originally my idea was to cover the cake in "planks of wood" but it didn't look how I wanted it. SO...I pulled it all off and went to bed. I had to sleep on it to figure out what I was going to do. Good thing I did because I woke up to this idea! Green-grass with a border of a measuring tap. I still wanted the cake to have a "built" feel to it so I "seamed" the edges and used silver wire to "nail" the letters on the side.
I was running out of time with this cake and there is a LOT of different things I wanted to add, like different tools and hoses and ladders, but this was ok with me to send as is.
At least he had his hammer! :o)
(Cake: Spice with fluffy carmel filing)
