Friday, October 3, 2008

A funny little story about Jacks birthday cake.


Jack wanted a race track cake for his birthday and this is a picture Mindi found of one she liked. This cake looks very easy to do with white frosting, sticking cookies, candies and cars on it, basic shape (no carving) pretty easy I thought. Well it started with eggs I went to start baking the cakes I thought I had about 9 eggs it turned out I only had 1. Sometimes Caleb likes to stick the shells back in the box instead of throwing them away and at a glance I thought I had some, I didn't actually open the carton to see. Logan has a friend named Stockton who comes to play with us on mon tues and wed. When he is here we can't drive anywhere because I can't turn off my airbag in the front and my two car seats in the back leave no room for a booster. So I grabbed the 2 wiggle cars for the boys to ride and the stroller for Ava, we had to walk to walmart to get eggs. We were making good time on the way there the boys had lots of energy and were racing down the side walk. By the time we got there Logan was riding on the stroller, Stockton was walking and I had hooked the two front wheels of the wiggle cars to the basket of the stroller to drag them along. As soon as we got in walmart the boys thought it would be a great idea to ride the wiggle cars threw the store. I didn't think it was as great of an idea, but to avoid the fit Logan looked like he was ready to throw if I said no I gave them the wiggle cars. They both jumped on and we headed for the eggs. We turned alot of heads but everything was going good we were moving pretty fast threw the store. We only had a couple of scares with little old laddies jumping out of the way because the boys would get distracted, no injuries. We got the eggs and headed home, of course by the time we got home I was pushing 3 kids and 2 wiggle cars. After I baked the cakes and had all the frosting ready to go I went and got the cars Mindi had given me to put on the cake. It turned out the cars were to big for the cakes I had made, Mindi bought regular sized cars and the ones in the picture were minis. I made the same size cakes as the picture. There smaller so you can stack them and the cakes would be thick enough for the oreos to fit around the outside. Well to make the race track big enough to fit the cars I wasn't going to be able to stack them. Which means I had to float the frosting around the bottom of the cake to make them appear thicker so the oreos would still fit around the outside. This left me with a hole in the middle of the cake after I pushed the four little circle cakes together. Luckily I had some Styrofoam left over from another cake, I used that to carve the bridge to hide the hole. But now I am out of frosting because I had to use that to hide the gap around the bottom of the cake. So I called my friend and "cake buddie" Amber to see if she had some extra frosting from past cakes I could use. It turned out she did, while I was waiting for her to arrive I started on the race track. I was making it out of fondant so it looked smoother plus black frosting isn't very good, to much food coloring to make it black makes it taste bitter. I don't think fondant is very good either but at least you can just peal that off. Well I had the fondant all laid out ready to cut and my tool was missing so I had to cut it with a wave edge tool. By now Amber has arrived and is frosting the bridge for me. I started laying pieces of the track on the cake so I could see how it was going to look and to see what pieces I still needed. It was all laid out it looked good but the wave edge needed to be trimmed off. Not thinking I picked all the pieces up and trimmed them with scissors. When I went to lay them back down on the cake they did not fit together the same because fondant stretches and I couldn't remember how they were exactly. So I trimmed some of the pieces a little more to make them fit on the cake while Amber started smoothing the fondant with water to make them look like they were all connected. While we put the finishing touches on the cake, m&ms, cars and the cookies, Caleb was throwing the kids in the car so we wouldn't be late. After everything that went wrong, the cake turned out really cute I think even better then the picture. Well thats the story about Jacks cake heres how it turned out. Also a big Thanks to Amber! Jacks race track cake!


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry about all the trouble. At least it turned out super cute and Jack loved it! Thanks for all your effort:)

Me said...

Ohmigosh, Kim, you are so freakin' talented. I wouldn't even worry about whether or not I could write or tell stories or whatever (which you can do better than you think you can, you know) if I could do stuff like that! Not only just make the cake, period, but to do it under the adversity of having three kids and no car and out of eggs and all that. I would've been on the phone, bawling to my mom, and Jack would've gotten some generic bakery cake, instead! In fact, Amelia almost didn't get her "welcome to the world" present because I was getting so frustrated with it the other night! So we all have our talents - cakes, kids, and patience are just some of yours!

Krystal said...

Wow! I didn't realize that you had gone through all of that to make the cake. You would have never known by looking at the cake that you ran into so many issues... it turned out great! I was laughing when I read about you hauling the kids to Wal Mart. You are more brave than I am! I wish I lived closer so I could have helped you out!

Dana said...

What a dang cute cake! I am amazed at every cake you make, each better, and more detailed than the last!

You are a great writer, what are you talking about? Have you read mine??