It's Good to be the King

I love making cakes! It's by far my new favorite thing to do, so I jumped at the opportunity to make a cake for my friend Ben's 34th birthday!

Ben loves Crown Royal. Ben loves a lot of other things too, but one of the first things I found out about him was how much he loves Crown Royal. Therefore, when Ben's wife, Phyllis, called and asked me if I had any creative ideas for his birthday, I immediately googled "Crown Royal cake" and came up with my own plan of action.

First I made 2 cakes (red velvet mix, cream cheese icing- this is his favorite icing flavor and I always like to pair it with red velvet cake...) and let them cool. Because I have a crappy apartment and a crappy oven and really crappy cake pans, the cakes came out a LITTLE lopsided. By a little I mean a LOT! (side note...now would be a perfect time for SOMEONE to save up for some nice cake pans...or a house...unless you're saving for something else...

sigh.

fine. cake pans it is)

Anyway, luckily for me, I was able to put the thin side of one on the thick side of the other and it ended up more or less level. With a thin layer of icing in the middle it looked pretty great. Then I eyeballed the shape of a Crown Royal bottle. It wasn't that hard, but if you're nervous, print out an image and cut around. Cover it with icing to crumb coat and prepare for the fondant.

Here comes the fun part! And boy oh boy am I glad Evan was there to help with this part.

I was trying to be cost conscious, so I bought white fondant and some candy coloring. I used this instead of icing coloring because it's not water based and using water-based food coloring in fondant can cause it to break down and soften, rendering it useless. I played with some colors (creating a very unsuccessful brown that is not suitable for human eyes) until I got the proper brown for the bottle, yellow for the cap and purple for the bag. This takes quite a bit of lower arm strength and your hands will get discolored and cuticles will look like crap for a while. Thanks for the help, Evan!

I rolled them out (pretty thick for the bottle so you can make lines in it like on the bottle--the rest pretty thin) and placed them on the cake. First the brown over the entire bottle. Smooth. Then the label in white. Brush a small amount of water on the back of the label and place on the cake. Repeat with the cap and band around the cap.

Here comes that iconic purple bag. I had fun with this one! I played around with it a few times before getting it perfect. I rolled it out, folded part of the top over so it looked like the section where the tie goes. Then I kinda gathered it up like folds in fabric and placed it on the cake. But I forgot to put water down first. So I held the folds in place and picked up sections and brushed water on the area under and placed it gently back down. I also used some extra yellow to make the cording. I rolled it out kindergarten snake style and twisted them together.

I had already gotten Evan to wrap it in plastic wrap but we took a picture of what it should look like thus far...

The next day I painted on the details by combining lusterdust and clear vanilla extract into little paint buckets. I brushed the gold paint onto the label and the cap and ties, bronze onto the bottle and purple onto the bag. I added a little food coloring (because I was too lazy to go to Michael's AGAIN to get more luster dust in the right colors) and it worked out pretty well but a little runny. I made red and purple for the details on the label. I also used the gold luster dust to write Ben's name on the bag and add some details. Here's a hint with that one though, maybe try writing the name on the bag BEFORE you put it on the cake because it was really difficult to do it after. Anyway, sorry for glossing over the last details, but you can be creative after you get the basic shape done. Here's what the finished product looked like. The lighting is quite a bit different, but you get the idea!

Hopefully will have some pics of people enjoying the cake later! :) I really should have taken my own pictures this time, but I had a little bit going on. 

OH! Forgot to mention that for party favors, I made the same oreo truffle recipe from before but did them as pops and just went with purple candy coating. Added some edible confetti with some corn syrup to make it a little more glittery. Then Evan bagged them up and I tied purple ribbons around them and BAM! All done! :) 

Happy Birthday, Ben! Hope it was the best day ever!

You Got a DREAM? In Hollywood, Everybody's got a DREAM!

After a trip to LA with the boy and this Hollywood themed baby shower, I feel like an expert on celebrities! :) Well, maybe I didn't see any real celebrities in California, but I certainly saw quite a few celebrity impersonators at Gen's baby shower!

I cannot believe that my best friend is about to have a baby, but throwing this shower and celebrating with all her family and friends really made it real!

I have to start out by saying that I had the best co-planners imaginable for this shower! Rachel and Petty and I had such a blast putting this all together. Kudos to Petty for the unique (and very Genesis appropriate) theme! After some very productive brainstorming sessions, we had a plan of attack! Petty was in charge of the food and did a FANTASTIC job! Rolled deli sandwiches, pasta salad and spinach salad with feta and cranberries...delish!

Rachel was our baked-goods goddess! She made such a fantastic strawberry cake in the shape of a popcorn bucket. Cute and fantastic!

She and I also had a wonderful time getting absolutely filthy making the Hollywood sign backdrop! Just a quick how-to on this one:

I got a blue sheet from Wally-World (mostly so I didn't have to paint the blue of the sky) and laid it out on top of a plastic drop cloth so as not to ruin my cheap apartment carpet. Then I rolled some left-over black furniture paint onto the bottom half of the sheet to provide a base for the landscape. After allowing that to dry, Rachel and  I had fun! We took every shade of green and brown that I had in my paint-tackle box and squirted and squeezed it out onto the sheet. This, of course, looked AWFUL so we decided to use a couple of paper towels to give it a kind of sponged effect. This looked better but still not great so we folded the sheet back over on itself and blotted it and squished it and crumpled it up so we could make the colors look a tad more mottled. Finally we had something that remotely resembled a landscape!

Rachel had to go home to her adorable son, so I opened the windows and turned on the fans and let that sucker dry. While that was happening, I decided to cut out the letters for the sign. I figured that doing so would allow me to create the best consistency in the width, height and shape of the letters. I cut a piece of letter-sized cardstock down to 8x10 (or maybe a little smaller) and folded them in half to cut out my letters. I wanted to make sure the double letters were exactly the same (and, to be honest, I wanted to save myself some trouble), so I only cut out one of each of those. I used place holders when I laid them out so that I could  ensure the adequate spacing of the letters. I traced them and filled them in with white fabric paint. A couple times. A ton of times, that is...it was quite difficult to make it opaque enough. Then, for a little extra oomf, I covered them in white glitter. It was fantastic. I have to admit!

A couple of other little things we did that made things fun...

E! Microphone and Oscar statuette carved out of florist foam and covered in model magic.

Cake Pops! (remember these from a few posts ago?) Thanks so much to Rachel's roommate, Casey, and her friend Alex for helping us so much with these! You guys saved us so much time!!

Casey also created these awesome paper mums for us! Not only did she save us time, but she saved us money as well. Flowers are expensive!!

Ballot box and ballots for our "most likely mom" awards! There was also a nominee list so everyone could vote, even if they didn't know anyone else at the shower!

Last, but not least, my absolute favorite piece of the puzzle! I created this poster using the same method I did for the giant map a while back. I modeled it on the original "A Star is Born" poster. I recreated the same feeling for the background and everything in Photoshop. It was quite a bit of work, but it was well worth it!

We added in a red carpet and some hand painted details and we had a fabulous time!

 I was so thrilled with the way everything gelled together and how much fun everyone seemed to have! Thank you all for helping us with the details and especially those of you who stayed and cleaned up!

Pack it up, Pack it in...

So, now that I'm back from LA and Danielle's travel themed shower is over, I can share the pics of the cake I did for it! :) Genesis (shocker) organized this awesome shower (that I, sadly, had to miss) and she asked me to make the cake. Everything she did was so well thought-out and adorable, I had to make sure the cake reflected all of her amazing ideas. Just an additional note: this theme isn't so random. Danielle's husband is in the Army and they get to travel a bunch of really awesome places. Three of the places Gen focused on were Savannah, Hawaii and Kentucky. Here we go...

Supplies:

• 2 cake mixes
• Buttercream Icing
• Eggs
• Vegetable Oil
• Chocolate Fondant
• Small packet of white fondant
• Plastic Rolling Pin
• Cornstarch
• Edible Food Markers (get the Americolor ones...they really work!)
• Luster Dust (in Bronze and Yellow)
• Vanilla Extract (everyone suggests clear extract or vodka but all I had was the regular brown stuff, so that's what I used)
• A Pizza Cutter
• Lots of Paper Towels

So I did this on an overnight adventure to the Nanner land...It was the perfect time for this project. They were asleep and I had a great surface to work with!

I started by making two 9x13 cakes and letting them cool completely! If you don't you'll end up with this: 

instead of this:

After you get it cooled and all, cut it to the desired shape. Basically, I chopped off the parts that were too wonky. Yes. Wonky. Then I covered the two with buttercream and smacked them together. (Ok...so I actually smacked them together then I covered them with buttercream, but it sounds better the other way)

Roll out the fondant! Cover your cake with this delicious treat and SMOOTH it out!

Next I took the white fondant and mixed it in with the brown to make the lighter colored straps. I also think I put some bronze luster dust in there too...attach the straps to the cake by lightly wetting the back area of the strap and placing it on the cake. Also made the edging accents this way. But put them on first obviously!

Next I made the buckles. Just white fondant formed and painted with a mixture of yellow luster dust and Vanilla extract. Paint it straight on. Also used this to create the buckle holes.

Here I had some fun. I cut out a bunch of different shapes and used the edible markers to make bumper stickers designed for their specific interests. First there was the "Aloha" sticker for their time spent in Hawaii. Then there were the "SAV" and "AASU" stickers for Dani's time in Savannah. There was also the "Getting Lucky in Kentucky" sticker. That's where they're going next! I also threw in the "I love my soldier" sticker since she actually has that one on her car and the "Army Wife" sticker because that's what Dani is! Last but not least, we've got the Georgia "G" sticker to reflect all of our years spent at the wonderful University of Georgia! :)