My weekend...

All last week I was anxiously looking forward to having NO SCHOOL on Friday! I had grand plans to clean, garden, grade, and bake a cake for Lizzie's Birthday. Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

First, Heidi asked me if I could make a Derby CupCake for her last bout celebration party. Since I'm poor at attending derby (it's so loud for my sensitive old lady ears), I thought I could support through cake.

Then, a friend in our ward called to see if I would make a cake for her sister's birthday, and she would pay. Can't say no to a paying customer!

So I got up Friday and did ALL my cleaning, weeding, errands (must buy butter!), and chores (that I had intended on spreading throughout the weekend). Then I sat down to create all the gumpaste flowers.

Lizzie had requested flowers in orange, pink, blue, and green (somehow I didn't actually get green on the cake, oops). Lizzie is a creative, high-style kind of girl, I didn't think 'real' looking flowers suited so I thought I'd try this layered look. It took a lot of cutting, but they came out cute!
Next I had to attempt some derby logos. The Sisters of No Mercy logo is a flaming skull nun...hmm, don't think I have that cookie cutter. I came up with my own version and some black and gold jammer stars.
Saturday Art had to go to work (pheww, I needed a distraction free kitchen), so my baking started at 5:30 AM with a mountain of butter. Literally, a mountain.
By 8, I had baked a chocolate cake, a vanilla cake, two mini chocolate cakes, and 7 dozen mini chocolate cupcakes.
Up next, frosting, LOTS of frosting. 4 batches of vanilla buttercream, double batch of chocolate buttercream and a double batch of chocolate ganache. Do you see the need for the mountain of butter?

I think my poor mixer is going to give out, buttercream takes a lot of whipping!
Chocolate Buttercream and Ganache take cooling so I went to stacking the vanilla buttercream cake. This was for the girl in my ward; she requested vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream, no fondant, no colors or flowers, very simple and maybe something to do with dogs, but for an adult. ???????

Mini cupcakes dipped in ganache...yummy...
Well, lets just say the rest of the day consisted of stacking, frosting, coating, frosting again, decorating, piping, and DISHES! Fortunately Art came home and proceeded to make his famous red sauce, so he cooked red sauce on one side of the room and I decorated on the other. Family bonding.
My request for a new house is a BIG fridge. I can't shop if it's a cake weekend.

This is also the only picture I got of the finished derby cake, Heidi said she would take one and send it to me. It had gray icing ("Gray icing, I can't begin to imagine how you make gray icing!" - Heidi will get that.)
Here are the finished products: The PLAIN Vanilla Cake

Lizzie's #11 Birthday cake with flowers and fondant (she requested the fondant, she actually thinks it tastes good!)

It was actually a very fun weekend and I enjoyed all the baking. It wasn't as exhausting as I thought it would be, however, it's now Wednesday, and I'm home sick. No voice yesterday (I'll have to post about that, my kids were so cute.) Maybe it was a bit much for one weekend!