Last Cake Class..at least for now.

So I went to the last class for this session on Wednesday. My normal class is on Tuesdays, but I will not be able to get to this Tuesday's class so I moved it up to this week. We were to make a double decker cake. (Making the cake is actually another story for another day). So as I drove to class Wednesday I tried to think of what I wanted to do. I had wanted to make a cake with a bunch of the fondant roses, but didn't think I would have the time. So I decided to make a mermaid cake. It was fun to do it. Here a couple of shots of the first layer. All the "rocks" are really colored fondant. Also, do you like the dolphin? That one was easy to make it was actually fondant pressed into a soap mold. I did that for the seashells on the bottom layer of the cake. The pink stuff is supposed to be coral. However, after three hours of decorating, I was tired and wanted to be done. I wanted to use one of my pretty flowers, and I tucked that into the rocks. I know it didn't belong, but I was proud of my pretty roses. That mermaid sure needs her bangs cut!! I am proud of the school of gold fish that I made. I aslo think the seashells were pretty, but they were very easy. I just marbled some fondant and put it into a soap mold. This cake was fun to make. From the pictures you may not be able to see that I marblized the blue fondant with some green to try to give it a sea look, the top layer shows it better than the bottom layer. Anyway, everyone at work really loved it. It was carrot cake again. :-)

Pretty Flowers!

So here is shot of one of the pretty roses we made last week in cake class. It was actually very easy to make. I can't believe how easy it was. It looks difficult and intricate, but looks are sure deceiving. It is made out of fondant...the edible (yet yucky) frosting that lays over a cake.

To make this, all you need is a couple of flower cutters, a leaf cutter, a tool to frill the edges, a bit of clear vanilla, and a foam pad to work on. It took about 5 mins to make and I think it looks very nice. We made some other flowers that night, but they weren't as pretty as this one. We learned how to make Easter lilies, morning glories, and poinsettias. The other flowers were fun and easy, but I was more impressed with the rose.

It has potential!

So here is one of my new plates. :-) From this I can see a beautiful window. Yes, it will have to be a big window since the plate is about 14 inches across. However, I see this as a very nice flower in a window of several shades of green for leaves. I just haven't completely figured it out.
You would think that by now I would have enough plates/glass and that I wouldn't continue to look on eBay for new things. However, I do. I have now started to collect things that will become potential projects. I need to stop because I can't seem to catch up with the potential projects and what I actually am able to accomplish. I now have a couple of stellar plates and that they would make beautiful windows. I am in the process of one window, but it is giving me a bit of heartburn and I get a bit frustrated with it and walk away then come back in a few days. Hopefully I will be able to finish that window next week. :-) I will have to post a picture of the finished product when I get done.

So, I made the cake last night. It turned out pretty nice. There was one thing about it that I didn't much care for, and that would be the piece that ties the bow together. It just looks like a piece plopped right on top of the cake. If I was to make this design again, I think I would do that last piece a bit differently and make it look a bit more like the rest of the bow. As for the fondant frosting, I didn't get the time to make the marshmallow fondant, and so I had to use the store bought Wilton fondant, and that stuff tastes nasty.

It is a bit easier to work with than the homemade stuff. I watched the others in the class struggle a bit with the homemade marshmallow fondant. I think I will make some of that this weekend so that I can use it in our class on Tuesday. Everyone at work liked this cake as well. I must be getting better. :-)

Pretty soon I will be getting people to ask me to make cakes for a Quincenera Party. JK! I don't think I would like to do cakes for a whole lot of parties.

Carrot Cake

So today I made a carrot cake. I needed a cake for Tuesday night, and so I had asked my co-workers what type of cake they had wanted next and they all said they wanted a carrot cake. I told them that I would have put the gross frosting on it because I have to cover it in fondant icing, not the nice cream cheese frosting. However, they didn't really care.

I didn't have a recipe for carrot cake, and so I looked online to see if I could find one that I liked. I came across Carrot Cake III on allrecipes.com. However, that one wasn't the one I made. I also found a carrot cake on cookinglight.com. I thought I would try that one since it was the only recipe that I could find that didn't call for a 1 1/2 cups of oil. This one only asked for 1/2 c butter. The trade off was it needed 5 cups of shredded carrots instead of the normal 3 cups. I didn't think so much of this until I went to mix the carrots in with the rest of the ingredients. There seemed to be more carrots than other ingredients. However, it cooked well.

It is currently in the freezer until Tuesday when I ice it first with buttercream frosting then in class we will put the fondant on it.

I need to make some fondant to put on the cake because it is expensive stuff, but if I make it, it will only cost me $4 instead of the $7. I came across a recipe for marshmallow fondant. Hopefully this will taste a lot bettern than the Wilton fondant. That stuff is horrible tasting. I even end up putting other flavors in it to hide the taste, but it doesn't work out so well.

I get to teach the lesson for Sunday School again next week. One of the guys asked me to teach, and I get to teach about all the wars that are at the end of Alma. Woo who!!

One of those days!!

So yesterday I had one of those days. It started even before I cracked open my eyes. I vaguely remember as I was trying to wake up that my eyes weren't feeling quite right. Finally when I really woke up I realized I had a problem. I thought I probably had pink eye. Then I got to thinking of the things that I needed to accomplish at work and realized there was NO way I could not go into work. There were things that had to be done, and we were already two people short because they went to SLC for some training.

So when I was able to crack open my eyes, I looked at the alarm clock. It wasn't even time to get up yet....what was I thinking? So I got up and realized I had forgot to take my contacts out and that I didn't have pink eye, it was just irritated from the contacts. Phew!

Before I was to go to work, there were a few chores to do around the house. I figured that since I was up a bit early then I should be able to accomplish them all. Nope...didn't even come close, plus I was late for work. As I got into my car, the button on one of my back pockets got caught on something and broke in half. This had happened to my other pair of pants, and I think that they just had cheap buttons.

I get to work and I knew that I had the almond board reports due by 5. I also had an accounts payable check run that I needed to approve by 12. Besides that, I had accounts receivable invoices that I needed to approve before the accounts payable check run because there were some credits I needed to give back to customers. Before I could do that, I had some things I needed to check on for a couple of the shipments that I needed to invoice.

In the meantime, we had sold three 4-wheelers in April to a local farm. I had, had some issues with the DMV for them last week. However, it turns out that when we sold them, I had been given misinformation and the wrong VIN numbers. So they showed up with the ATV's to get the proper paperwork. I couldn't give them the proper paperwork because we had given the paperwork to someone else that we thought we sold those VIN's to. While I am trying to figure this out, my boss comes up and tells me that it has been requested that I go to Chico in two weeks to train some of the workers there. That was fine and I told him sure that was fine. I don't think that I even looked up from what I was doing. I did explain to him that I was in the middle of something that there were people up front waiting for me to finish. During the midst of trying to clean that up and figure out what we were going to do, a stake came to drop off there handcarts and wanted their deposit check returned. The poor missionary that came up to me to ask me for the check, I just didn't have time to go looking for a deposit check. I had a mess to clean up. I told him that I would deal with it in a few minutes after I finished the VIN mess up. Then I had to ask a co-worker to come translate because I didn't speak good enough Spanish. At that moment, another co-worker needed him to translate for something else. However, I looked at her (and she is new) and told her, "No, I need him right now!" Since I am queen of the office, I trump, right?

So the VIN got as cleaned up as possible as of now. Then I couldn't find the deposit check, but it turns out that they never gave us one.

Then I sat down at my desk to work on the accounts receivable invoices, and heard a rip. My zipper seam was coming undone. I didn't have time to run home and get a new pair of pants. I couldn't believe it. Now I had a hole. Since I was wearing two shirts I thought that if I un-tucked the first one then it would cover it. It kind of did. So I decided it would have to do. I wouldn't get up from my desk and then if I had to, I would just hold a file or something in front of me. However that didn't work out so well either. At one point, I sat down again and heard the rip again. This time the whole zipper was done for. I thought my shirt did an okay job hiding it, however, when I stood up when my boss was talking to me, I know he must have thought my zipper was undone. He totally looked and so I know that the shirt didn't do a good enough job. No one had a safety pin or a needle. I had dental floss, and that would work only if I had a needle. I knew tape wouldn't work, but then I remembered that I had a stapler. So in case of emergencies, FYI-staple will work for a needle and thread....wish I had realized that in the first place instead of flashing my boss. What can I say...all in a days work.

Then I had about three different people in the afternoon asking me for help on something that needed to be done. I couldn't say no.

With all that needed to be done at work, I still had to leave by 5:30 because I had class in Bakersfield at 6:30, and I had to get my supplies ready to take to class.

I was able to run 2.89 miles, which is .15 more than I had ever achieved in the same time frame. The accounts receivable invoices got released in time, and the accounts payable checks were done on time as well. The almond board reports were completed by 5:30 and then I was able to go home. Life goes on. Crisis averted. :-) So it must have been a good day!

Pretty Cake

So last night was the last class for Wilton Class number two. I think I should stop now for a bit,
but I think I will continue on because August is still 40% off, and I get a $5 break for taking the class right after another class.
When I brought this cake into work, everyone thought it was beautiful, and no one wanted to cut into it. I didn't get into the lunch room until about 12:30, and there was everyone circled around the cake waiting until I cut the first slice. They had pretty much finished their lunches, and wanted a piece. Within 15 minutes of me cutting the cake, it was
gone. The funny thing about this cake was it was accidentally a purple cake. I was actually trying to make it a red, white, and blue confetti cake, but I didn't use the correct sprinkles in the cake batter. I had used the small hard balls instead of the soft cylinder sprinkles. So just as the sprinkles hit the cake batter, they started to dissolve. I tried to quickly mix them in so they wouldn't completely dissolve, but it seemed they just more dissolved. I eventually ended up with a pink/purple cake. It was cut, and no one seemed to mind.