As all my fellow mamas have experienced, pregnancy does weird things to your body. Love of sudden foods that once held no appeal and a disgust for dearly loved delicacies is one of the biggest things I dealt with in both of my pregnancies. With my first child, Domino's pizza became enemy number one. All it took was one sniff to send me running to the restroom. Unfortunately for me, cake is what did me in during my second pregnancy.
It was quite traumatic - how in the world am I suppose to make the amount of cake I had promised when just the sight of it made my stomach turn? It greatly helped that the couple I was making the wedding order for were very dear friends of mine. A co-worker that I had worked with for six years and his wonderful fiance with a bubbly personality you couldn't resist! Plus there is that whole baking is my life thing that I have going for me.
And so it began....
The first thing that I did to start preparing for this massive order of cake was making the cupcake toppers. I bought a chocolate seashell mold and molded a couple hundred seashells out of white candy melts. I then hand-painted them with three kinds of luster dust to give them dimension. They were so cool looking! And they were able to be done well in advance and stored up for the big day, a huge bonus in my book!
The bride and groom wanted a pretty simple wedding cake. They asked for a custom starfish topper to go with their beach theme. I molded two starfish from chocolate and dressed them up in their finest for the occasion. As for the cake itself, we went with smaller layers covered in white fondant and embellished with more hand-painted seashells and "sand." The "sand" was created by crushing graham crackers with a rolling pin.
Then came the hard part. A Star Wars themed groom's cake. I k now that I have written before about trademark items. They are so hard to do! If it doesn't look like what the client is expecting it can quickly turn into disaster! We discussed a lot of ideas with the final decision being a R2-D2 cake. A 3-D cake at that. I was completely freaking out but my co-worker had complete confidence in me. One thing that I can say about my friends - they really know how to push the limits of my comfort zone when it comes to decorating cakes!
My husband helped me a lot with the support structure for the groom's cake. The center body would be cake and the legs would be made of fondant-covered support pieces. It was the most challenging cake project I have ever done. But it was successful. R2 was the hit if the wedding and had many people asking me for business cards. All of which I very politely turned down. After all, I had my own little cupcake baking in the oven that I needed to think about!
And so it all turned out and my cake decorating hobby was on hold. Well, it was until September. My little girl was turning four and of course she asked Mommy to decorate a cake for her. How could I resist?
