I Have Survived!

And so did my oven!

The weekend of parties is over. I feel like I need a vacation. 3 parties, 3 days, 3 themes, 3 menus, and 3 guest lists…who could ask for anything more? So, let's start with Friday night.

The first party was "Candles". This was to be the typical Birthday Party. We wound up with a really good crowd. In terms of the menu…simple. Chips, dips, cake and ice cream. Sounds simple except for the cake. With the over all theme of the party being Centennial 50+50=100, I needed to create a 100 cake. My original plan was to pay someone to create it for me, but that proved to be way expensive. I then thought I could buy blank cakes from the supermarket bakery, that didn't pan out. So, I wound up baking them myself.

I have a spectacular oven! Considering it isn't a full size oven it did a wonderful job. I baked the 3 cakes, let them cool overnight and then came the task of carving out the 100.

Look! It's a 1 in Yellow Cake!

The 1 was the most difficult carving job, so I tackled it first. Turned out pretty good. One of the zeros was a white cake and the other a chocolate cake. Next, I had to figure out how to split them so I could add the fillings.  My Bakerific Work Wife, Serena had a wonderful idea. String a thin wire between 2 rulers creating a giant cheese cutter. Well I didn't have any rulers hanging about, so I used 2 pencils. Worked like a charm! Once I had them split I spread the filling and put them back together.

The chocolate zero with dark chocolate filling

Once assembled and filled I was then tasked with icing the cakes. I am no baker usually and the idea of icing 3 cakes was daunting to say the least. I wish I had pics of the process, it was an ordeal I never want to relive.  A carved cake is nothing but crumbs on the edges so I wound up using a ton of icing just to get coverage and then scraping a lot of it off. Next time, as much as I hate it, I'll use fondant. Wait, there isn't going to be a next time!

So, here is how they turned out, once all iced.

Look at that wonderful patterning of the icing! Ok, it isn't perfect, but neither an I. I wish I had a pic of them with the candles all lit. It was a production involving 3 people getting them ready for presentation and no one else had a camera in their hands.

So that was Friday night. I don't have much to say about Saturday night. It morphed into a much more low key version of Friday night instead of the debaucherous festivity I had planned. There was left over cake and more chips and dip for food. Stay tuned for the Sunday party which I called, "T-Dance". The food was much more spectacular for that one! I was suitably exhausted afterwards.