Don's cousin graduated from UCF this weekend and I thought that that would give me a great opportunity to try out another cake! I love crooked cakes and really wanted to try one out...so I did. I was originally going to do a three tier cake (12", 9", and 6"). I chose to do the yummy dark chocolate cab sauv cake with the black cherry filling that I did for the wine bottle cake, and I also did a champagne cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberry filling.
I baked 5 of the 6 cakes that I was going to need on Wednesday. Thursday after work I stopped at Michaels to get fondant, stencil plastic, an exacto knife, and boxes. I also had a quick trip to Publix to get some powdered sugar and butter. When I got home I made the executive decision to skip on the 12" and just do a 2 tier cake with a 9" and 6". Partly because I had forgotten to get more chocolate to make the batter, and partly because, well, I just didn't want to! Thursday was a busy night to say the least. Don ordered pizza's and I began making the icings. For the top tier which was the chocolate I did a dark chocolate butter cream frosting, iced the cake, and put it in the fridge. For the bottom tier I did a frosting with fresh strawberries, and it turned out awful! So back to Publix we went for some more ingredients and a change in plans to use cream cheese to add some thickness because the other was entirely too runny. The new frosting was still a bit more runny than I liked, but it tasted amazing and ended up working pretty well. I had two cakes for each tier, and when I iced them I cut each cake in half so there ended up being 3 layers of filling. I put the strawberry cake in the freezer because we were going to be taking it on a 2 hr drive to Orlando after work on Friday and I wanted the frosting to stay cold enough.
After putting the filling in the cakes I carved them to make them crooked and iced them. I also cut out the "Golden Knight" figure with the stencil plastic as well as the UCF letters. I finally finished everything a little after midnight...ugh.
Friday I left work after the last patient checked in and we got on the road shortly after 6. The cakes made the trip very well. I started out by sanitizing the coffee table at the hotel and rolling out the white fondant for the bottom tier. It worked really well and turned out great! I measured out the placement for the top tier on the bottom tier and cut out the cake into the last layer of filling. I put four wooden dowels in (which Don did an amazing job cutting for me) and the cake cardboard into the hole I had cut out. After making sure that the top tier would fit in the cut out hole I mixed a gold gel color with vodka and painted the bottom tier. It took a couple of tries to get it not too orange or yellow, but it turned out pretty well. For the top tier I used a fondant which was already colored black. Using gold luster dust and the stencil I had already made I brushed the Golden Knights onto the cake. I used the UCF stencil and cut out all of the little "U"'s, "C"'s, and "F"'s and attached them to the cake with the chocolate butter cream.
After all was said and done it was around 1am and we hadn't had dinner yet because I got right into decorating when we got to the hotel which was now a disaster area...I'm pretty sure the cleaning people were so confused when they dumped the garbage! I cleaned up my sugary mess and we walked to a Perkins for a quick hunger fix.
We were supposed to meet Don's family at his cousin's apartment about 40min away at 10:00. Timing was going great in the morning I was out of the shower and getting ready before 9 until everything hit the fan. It was a slow motion disaster that I could not avoid...while putting on my makeup in my dress which had a white bust and was navy blue on the bottom, I dropped a glob of foundation off of my brush! Don ran to Walgreens to get some stain remover and I continued getting ready while trying to figure out what to do if it didn't work because that was the only thing I had brought to wear for the graduation. Unfortunately the stain stick didn't work and my cardigan didn't match sooooo plan B we searched for a Kohls. When we got there I saw a Ross and ran in there instead. I was so lucky I saw a dress that I had loved just the last week but couldn't justify spending $40 on...and it was $12! I did a quick try on and it looked great so off we went. We had the directions in the iPhone and got completely lost because they were giving names of roads and exits which weren't listed, but we finally made it. The cake turned out great and was oh so yummy!
Now it's off for a nap because I'm exhausted!!!
