Cake Chronicles - Intermission

It's about to be baby shower weekend! I'm gearing up for a fun-filled day on Friday of decorating both baby shower cakes (see descriptions here). But as I am out of town for work, aside from cake planning, I've been prepping for these baby showers in other ways :) First, I picked up some amazing baby Nikes for both of the mamas! I'll post pics after the showers to keep the surprise.  Second, I am also in charge of party favors for the second baby shower, and I made them last night :)

I went to Michaels and got dinosaur stickers, ribbon and clear baggies, and filled them with mints, hersheys kisses, and bubbles!

the supplies

 It took about an hour to make and fill forty baggies, but it was a fun project to do while watching Netflix in my hotel room. I think they turned out to be very cute!

finished favors!

I still need to figure out what is going to go on top of the cakes. I need to find toy dinosaurs for the sheet cake, and either a toy cowboy hat or toy boots to go on the cowboy cake. Fortunately, I have a couple of days left to search!

Cake Chronicles pt 2

Continuing the series on the giant cake project I am attempting, I am proud to announce that (some of) the cakes are baked!  Following my cardinal rule of large cake projects, I plan and prepare as far in advance as possible. I like to bake the cakes themselves 2-3 weeks before the "big day" so that when the event day comes, stress levels are minimal, and if anything goes wrong, there is plenty of time to make it right!

Last weekend (two weeks before both baby showers) I baked both baby shower cakes. One cake is a two-tiered, round chocolate cake using my favorite chocolate cake recipe of all time, from the best cake book in the world, Sky High. I made two layers per tier: one tier is 12" round, and the other is 8" round.  The Sky High cake book provides recipes for triple layer cakes, 6, 8, and 10" square. I used a single recipe (the 10" square version) and it made the perfect amount of batter for one 12" round and one 8" round, which I baked at the same time.  If you're keeping score at home, this means I made two batches of batter, and did two rounds of baking, to get all four layers. According to this sizing guide, this should be enough cake for ~80 people. Although as I type this, I'm kind of worried that I won't have enough cake... we'll see.

The other cake is a sheet cake. I made one layer chocolate, using the same 10" square recipe which was plenty for a sheet cake - yay! I also made one layer of buttermilk vanilla, which comes from the same cookbook, although here's a smaller version of it already on the web. I baked the 12" round recipe which was enough for the sheet cake, but the batter was too much for my 7 qt mixer!! I had to dump it into a giant bowl and mix in 14 eggs by hand.....yeah that's an experience I don't want to repeat.

So to recap, I made three large batches of chocolate cake batter, and one large batch of vanilla cake batter.  Four rounds of pans in the oven later, all of the cakes were baked!  I wrapped them in triple layers of plastic wrap, put them on cake boards, and put them nicely into the freezer, where they will wait for May 17th!

I didn't take any pictures of the actual cake process (oops), but here are some before/after pictures:

Shopping for cake pans at the restaurant supply store in Oakland

Post-visit to Costco: giant bags of flour, sugar, powdered sugar, eggs, butter, cinnamon, vanilla, buttermilk and cocoa powder

Cakes wrapped and stacked in the freezer

Cake Chronicles

I am about to embark on a few very large cake projects, and I want to document this process so I can look back one day and remember how absolutely crazy I was :)  In the span of a month, I have offered to make cakes for three very important events. Here's the rundown:

• May 18: baby shower for one of my best friends. There will be 80-100 people at the baby shower (can you tell how loved that baby will be?) and the cake will be chocolate with the possibility of fondant (cowboy theme). I have never made or worked with fondant. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/AKMhE
• May 19: baby shower for another dear friend. There will be 40-50 people at this shower. It will be a dinosaur cake. I have no idea what that means yet, but I'll have to figure that out within the next two weeks! Also the cake will be a yellow cake, with buttercream frosting. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/kq4ht
• June 8: my best friend's wedding. There will be 300 people at the wedding. This requires a lot of cake. I plan to make one big "show" cake (three tiers, chocolate cake, pink buttercream frosting), and two sheet cakes to keep in the kitchen (one carrot cake, and one vanilla cake with strawberry lemon buttercream). Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/p55xZ

The location of each event is also important. The baby shower on the 18th is in Fresno, the baby shower on the 19th is in Oakland, and the wedding on June 8 is in Clovis. Aside from the Oakland shower, the travel time to Fresno/Clovis is 3 hours, which means I'll need to transport the cakes long distance.  Here's the game plan:

• Bake the baby shower cakes in advance and freeze
• On Friday May 17th, decorate both cakes
• On Saturday May 18th, drive to Clovis with the big cake, leave the other cake in the fridge in Oakland.
• Weekend of June 1, bake the wedding cakes
• On Friday June 7, drive all the wedding cakes to Clovis.

Next up - baking the cakes!