This is the second 'mad-hatter' cake I was asked to make. This time for the 10th birthday of a coworker's daughter. This is where I started getting really nervous. Up to this point, the cakes I'd been asked to make were for people who didn't really care what I came up with. This cake, however, would be seen by the birthday girl's entire class and sports teams, and the parents of all of those kids - so, basically, potential clients. Yikes!
The original cake order was for a small topsy-turvy cake for about 10 kids. By the time I needed to start working on it, the birthday girl had decided on a much larger guest-list and I now needed to feed close to 40. To keep the cost close to the original budget, we decided on the two-tiered mad-hatter cake and 2 dozen cupcakes to go with it.
I have no idea how many hours went into this cake - all I can remember now is working all day at work, coming home to feed the kids, make sure they had baths and get them in to bed on time, and then staying up LATE working several nights in a row. One night during the process there was an impromptu block party, of sorts, and I ended up accidentally turning the oven off once with the big tier still baking, and then forgetting to turn it back on for the cupcakes. Good grief. You'd think I'd never done this before. The lesson learned here was that you cannot multi-task in the kitchen AND watch your husband and all of his friends play pool. Oh - and it's a good idea to wait until AFTER everything is baked and all of the gumpaste is colored before you crack open a beer and relax.
Wanting to save a little time - and a lot of pain in my right hand - I opted for fondant zebra stripes instead of the hand piped ones. I used chocolate marshmallow fondant and colored it black. It is SO much easier to: A) Get a true black fondant if you start with a dark chocolate base; B) Color/flavor the fondant while it's still in the melted marshmallow stage; and C)Get the stripes to stick to the buttercream when it hasn't been sitting in the fridge.
I hate piping borders. Almost as much as I hate going to the dentist or doing laundry. I just don't like it at all - maybe it's because I'm not very good at it.....or maybe I'm not good at it because I hate it so much. Who knows. So to avoid having to pipe the border on this cake, I made a $16 investment in some gumballs at a local candy store. Sure it added some additional cost that I hadn't budgeted for but it saved me loads of time and resulted in the kids getting a little added bonus with their pieces of cake. Win-win. Another short-cut (or as I like to call them, innovative ideas) on this cake were the decorative buttons that I added to it to go with the 'peace' theme. Another $2 I hadn't budgeted but, come on, what's $2? The added extra investments were worth it to deliver a cake that had people 'ooohing' and 'aahhhing' over it.
The giant number 10, the stars and the piece signs sticking out of the cake were made from colored gumpaste. I hadn't really used it much before this cake but I was curious about it and gave it a shot. I did learn, though, that even the heaviest gauge jewelry wire is not sturdy enough to hold up gumpaste cut-outs. Good to know for next time.
Oh - and one more lesson I learned with this cake? I definitely need a Tahoe - or something similar - to deliver cakes in. Riding across town in the front seat of Ricky's Chevy truck with this cake in my lap threatening to slide around and fall to it's death was not fun. So I'm adding an SUV to my list of cake-decorating supplies that I need.
In the end, the birthday girl and her mom were both thrilled with the cake, and working on it with Ricky's son, Landon, in the house gave us some time to bond and talk fondant, gumpaste, buttercream and more. I had no idea he was such a savvy little cake boss, but I'm pretty sure he's getting a piping bag and a practice board for Christmas this year!
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