Happy Mother’s Day!

Last Mother’s Day I made two small vanilla cakes for Vin’s mom and decorated them with some of the first frosting roses I’ve ever made.  I remember one had chocolate frosting with pink roses cascading down the side, and the other had white vanilla frosting with lavender roses.  I didn’t take any pictures @ the time b/c I considered it to be practice and didn’t think I’d really continue decorating cakes and baking.  Oh well.  I guess if anyone orders a wedding cake from me in the near future, I can make basic tiers with borders and *drumroll please* cascading roses.  Because I haven’t tried anything else.  haha

It’s weird to think that a year has passed since I took up this hobby.  I don’t feel like I’m significantly better @ it since I haven’t really had a chance to practice or learn any new techniques, and to be honest I really don’t think I’ll ever have the time to ever take legit cake decorating classes.  I guess being meticulous and adventurous helps make the baking look and taste good.  And having a photographer for a husband and a studio in the basement isn’t a bad thing, either.  But I do strive to make things that are slightly out of the ordinary or challenge myself to make things outside of the cake mix box, so to speak.  Being that it’s Mother’s Day, I had to make something special for Vin’s mom that was better than last year’s cakes.  (Unfortunately my mom is too far away to get the same gift; the best I could do was have flowers sent  =(  Boo.)  With my current work schedule and still being tired/achy, I didn’t have time to construct a cake masterpiece.  So I thought, what could I do that’s relatively simple yet still be spectacular? What am I good @? Cupcakes… frosting roses… I’ll make huge rose cupcakes!

 

um, I guess I went overboard...

I made some chocolate cupcakes… well, 96 chocolate cupcakes to be exact, since I also had to fulfill another Mother’s Day order and had another request for Lakers-themed cupcakes (and I always bake extra).  It was a pretty big baking weekend for me, but it felt good diving headfirst into the deep end again.  It made me feel “normal” again.  That and baking in wedge heels = I was back in business.  (I used to bake and decorate barefoot but spending hours flat on my feet really hurt and I’ve since worn 4″-heeled wedge shoes to put less weight on the balls on my feet… b/c wearing sneakers would simply be too obvious of a solution  =)

I crushed some chocolate, graham cracker and pretzels in the food processor to simulate “dirt” in the planter for my mother-in-law’s baked gift.  And I was going to make green fondant leaves to put it instead of green icing since I figured, hey, might as well go big or go home (wait…). Unfortunately, the rest of my awesome plan didn’t work out so well.  I kneaded green food coloring for the fondant leaves to put around the pot, but everything else took so long that the fondant started drying out before I could place it where I wanted.  And then I couldn’t get the perfect frosting flavor + consistency (again, the balance between taste and stiffness drove me up the wall) so my icing flowers came out a little softer than I liked.  And then I didn’t put enough stabilizing sticks in the planter so the cupcakes didn’t stay on the pot.  My original plan to put 6 roses in the pot surrounded by fondant leaves turned out to be a disaster b/c I was out of time (had to make a delivery for a customer and head to the T house for dinner), I was THIS close to smashing the clay pot since this really shouldn’t have been this difficult.  So with Vin’s assistance, we ended up with one single rose cupcake in a planter as a quick fix.

Et voila…

Single rose cupcake in flower pot

Here’s to constantly one-upping myself all the time…  this may kill me if I keep it up.  haha

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and grandma, too!  <3

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