A new project!!

For the last couple of weeks I have been praying and pining for an excuse to make and decorate another cake..  I don't know why, but getting in the kitchen and trying out all sorts of new cake and icing recipes and playing around with the decorations... its just well, cake bliss.  So, I FINALLY have an excuse to make another awesome cake this week, my friend Sonia is turning 21 on Weds...  One important thing when you are making a cake is to plan ahead!! A cake needs to be made at LEAST 2 days in advance so you have time to bake, re-bake if you f*** up, and decorate the way you really want to.  For a decorating novice, it will take a little lot of trial and error to get your cake just right!!

Take this cake I made for my Dad's 60th birthday (big deal bday, right?!).  Well, my mom was in Utah visiting my brother, so I drove to Huntsville to cook dinner for my dad and bake him (and decorate) a cake!  I was still in my cake decorating class at that point, so I was still realllyyy bad at decorating.  I made him this awesome made-from-scratch mac and cheese, YUMM!!! And then (around 7pm, yikes!) started to make the cake.  I made the strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream icing (see old post for recipe), which is not an easy cake to make.  Around 10pm the cake was FINALLY cooled enough for icing... At this point I was tired, Dad was hungry, Allison was spacing out watching me have a semi-mental breakdown because I couldn't get the icing to turn purple... so I did a really shitty job... BUT, I learned a very important lesson... bake a cake two days ahead so said mental breakdown will not occur again..

I mean, just look at this cake... it makes me want to cry.  The icing is a yucky blue, supposed to be purple, the writing sucks, I can't even make a circle of shells... *sigh*  BUT, I got my really bad decorating experience out of the way early, and it goes to show that practice and time can really improve your skills!

I plan on starting the cake tonight (once I decide what kind to make) and will post with pictures soon!

Happy Baking!