Stabby's Corner with Erica S. Vol. I

Welcome to the first edition of Stabby’s Corner with Erica S.!

This entry is a little different from what I envisioned for my corner, but this was an experience worth documenting.

So let’s talk about cakes. This Friday, I have a Rotaract party that some genius made a vegetarian potluck. So…no pigs in a blanket (they’re missing out). I pondered long and hard (ha) on what to bring, and I remembered that I made a cake for the end of my friend’s first year of law school! It was fun(fetti) and delicious, so why not do the same?

Then I watched Food Network Challenge: Toy Story 3 cakes.

Fast forward two hours and I had four cake pans in the oven, corn syrup, four pounds of powdered sugar, Crisco up to the elbows, imitation vanilla (because the clear stuff was nowhere to be found in Jewel, and the real stuff is too expensive, anyway), and a dash of salt….guesses as to what this creates? FONDANT.

Also, please refrain from calling it “fonDANT” in my presence. FONdant.

1) Who are you?

2) Get over yourself.

Fast forward past Melanie’s pastrami sandwich (we get it…you like Manny’s), and the hours it took for me pick out fondant stamps (we’ll not go down this road), and I’m home again, with four chilled cakes to equal two tiers.

I wish I took a picture of the inside (more on why later), but if you care, each tier is one half white cake and one half devil’s food cake. So, those at the party who “only like chocolate” can suck it. It looks cooler this way.

Michael’s has a great cake decoration aisle, where I picked up some icing dye to color my fondant. If you haven’t had the pleasure of working with icing dye, it’s actually a gel that you knead into the fondant. I suppose food coloring is too watery. Too bad I bought some before going to Michael’s…Listen. Chicago is great. But to return the food dye, I have to either walk a mile to the store, or wait for a bus. This place also has a parking lot, rubbing my face in the fact that my almost brand new car is in Tucson.

Whatever.

So, here I go, ripping off a chunk of fondant I made earlier, and coloring it green. Like, green for grass. Get it? Melanie says, “make it more solid!” I say, “…” She says, “You know what I mean. It’s translucent right now. Not like you can see through it, but you know what I mean.” I say, “…” So I make something that is already clearly solid…more solid.

Tossing down a small handful of powdered sugar, I roll out the fondant to approximately 13.5” by 13.5” and…it’s stuck to the table. And again. And again. And again. At this point, maybe 20 minutes after starting, I’m getting red faced and pissed off. So I move into the kitchen and work on the counter top, instead. More powdered sugar, and more failure! I start down a familiar and comfortable path, finding some way to blame my failings on my sister. This makes me feel better. :D

Blah blah blah, about an hour after my first roll out, Melanie and I finally get the fondant on the cake. Hellllllll yeah.

The red was a little easier, because we had a system at this point. I roll, Melanie rolls it onto the roller, and I unroll onto the cake. A sort of bing bam boom thing.

STACKING TIME!!!!!!!! Now, I both forgot to buy wooden or plastic dowels and decided not to get them. Mistake number 1 (…sure). The top tier is too big. Well, shit. I did not anticipate that happening! So, here is the part of the story that explains why the top tier’s fondant cover is so weird looking. I actually cut the cake down on two sides, then patched it up. I’d say I was close to crying by the end of this, but the truth is, I was closer to putting my fist or someone’s face through a wall. The only saving grace is that when I cut into the cake, the two tier’s looked really cool stacked on each other. I’ll take a picture when we finally cut into the cake tomorrow night.

Cakes stacked, my blood pressure dangerously high, I start up with that black band around the bottom of the red tier. Initially, the cakes were supposed to emulate a lady bug on grass. Hence, green on bottom and red on top. But because of the DISASTER that is the top tier, that went out the window.

(I just found a piece of fondant on the hinge of my computer.)

Black dye looks great! But my hands are still tinted a weird color after kneading dye into the fondant. Oh, by the way, somewhere in this part of the story, Melanie offers some advice. It was not received well. Also, I lost a piece off of the tool that cuts strips of fondant. I looked and looked and got really mad and cursed a lot. Seems to be a theme, hmm? Now you understand why this is called, “Stabby’s Corner with Erica S.”

Light bulb moment said to put green leaves on the red, and red leaves on the bottom. Making the leaves was fun, since I bought little punchy things. Although, Melanie said that the leaf in the leaf with the leaf punched out looks like a vagina. I dunno. I think it looks like a leaf.

So, I started this process at about 10am. It was probably 11:30pm. I was exhausted. Eff the red leaves, and on went stems for the fake flowers (like I could make gum paste flowers that look that nice…), a black, grassy border, and DONE!!!!

14 hours after I left my house to buy the cake mix, I was finally finished. And you know what? So was the frosting inside the cake. Sitting out for hours, the frosting had melted, and wasn’t holding the shape it was supposed to. Who cares. Take a picture, smile, and get my ass in bed.

Here’s me and my zombie hand with the finished product.