Let Them Eat Cake

It seems as though, literally, everyone is due this year (and for some unknown reason, everyone’s having boys!). Though being pregnant did have its perks, I may be enjoying the pregnancies of my friends and family members a whole lot more than my own.

 My pregnancy enthusiasm has inspired me to voluntarily sign up for making the cake for my best friend’s baby shower. Yikes!

As far away from being a pastry chef as I am, on occasion I like to experiment or test my patience (cause we all know that pastry requires a lot of patience). A few weeks ago, I decided to use my son’s 6-month birthday as an excuse to experiment with fondant. Fondant is that smooth, play-dough like covering that professional cake makers typically use to give their cakes a flawless appearance. It also provides a nice, clean base for cake to be transformed into art.

Unfortunately, fondant is usually the only thing people leave behind on their plates because of its unappealing texture and overwhelming sweetness. Not to worry, I found a better tasting recipe for fondant made out of marshmallows instead of the usual straight sugar and glucose concoction. Well, to be honest, I initially chose this recipe because of its simplicity and short ingredient list, but later learned that its flavor was pretty good too.

So after making my first ever fondant covered cake (which proved to be quite satisfactory in terms of presentation and flavor, yay!), it is only natural for me to assume that I can go on to make the kind of cakes seen on Ace of Cakes. I’m like five seconds away from hitting up a cake supply store and buying everything in sight. Let’s see, if my son’s cake, which  was pretty small, (8 inches in diameter and 4 layers tall) took me like 6 hours to make, then this baby shower cake will take me 3872642356287 hours to complete. The shower ‘s in 3 weeks. If my calculations are correct, I should have started working on this cake last year. I can vividly picture the day before the baby shower – my kitchen covered in confectioners’ sugar and cake crumbs, my nights occupied with cake nightmares for the next several months.

 No, I’ll be fine…I think. The only thing I can do at this point is plan the most awesomist cake ever! Let the brainstorming begin. I'll keep you posted.