Food as Love

Recently I attempted to prove myself via baking. Prove myself as a mother, a baker, a friend and a party thrower. This is my story. Starting now. Almost now.

But first; I am not a regular blogger at the best of times, and these are not the worst of times, no they aren't. But they are the busiest of times. So I tend to bake when I'm not screamingly stretched to breaking point. So, recently, no baking.

Until now. And with what sweet crumb driven morsel did I decide to rejoin the baking world? A birthday cake for my darling 7 year old. He had expressed many desires over the last 12 months. Gabe tends to plan ahead. For example, as he cut into his cake last year he said "Next year I want a Minecraft Cake". True story, literally as he cut the 6 year old cake.

The Minecraft Cake morphed to Angry Birds, Spiders, Volcanoes (again) and then Minecraft and... the Adventure Time cake. And there is stayed - virtually solid.

Do you know what Adventure Time is? Short answer - a cartoon on TV. Long answer - I don't have enough space in this blog to really delve into what Adventure Time is.  'Seriously bent' is a good shot at it though. It is an exceedingly loopy adventure series following a dog called Jake and a human called Finn - who inexplicably wears a white hat that gives him weird ears. There is an episode in which that hat comes alive and tries to kill everyone - that might help you with the style of the show. Gabe loves it. LOVES IT. Luckily he doesn't understand all of it. Luckily I don't either, I might go mad if I did.

I went online (Oh Internet, how I love you) and looked for Adventure Time cakes. BIG topic. Very big. Lots of Adventure Time cakes. I had already decided to enlist the two biggest guns that I have in my baking arsenal of weapons/friends. Stacey - all round baker of the stars and Sue - all round doyenne of fondant. Good women to have at your back, during a cake fight.

Sue recommended we make this:

That doesn't look too hard!

Compared with some of the other designs online I agreed with her. As long as we didn't have to make the Rainicorn then I was feeling good.

Stacey gave me a chocolate cake recipe that was good for covering with fondant and which would also taste pleasurable. Sue bought a kilo of fondant icing, some gum stuff and all manner of other contraptions which I ogled at.

I'm not putting the cake recipe here - it's a basic chocolate cake and is so not the point that even writing that feels like too much information.

Sue arrived at around 6.30 pm - I had already made the two cakes that comprise the base and Sue had the Hemisphere Tin that would make the rounded top section. So we made that. Rounded base tins do not like to sit evenly in the oven. After some hilarious and jaunty angles we corrected it, but not before we irrevocably made it wonky.

We ate dinner, with no idea of what was to come.

Fondant requires a lot of rolling - it is a sort of sticky demon substance which is white. It tastes weird, like sweetened cardboard. If you want to make it a colour you must add the colour and then knead and knead and knead. Forever. Jake the Dog, is a yellowy orange dog.

Knead Sue Knead!

This is how people get Carpel Tunnel. We kneaded a shitload of the orange fondant and then set about rolling it. Nice and flat and even. It feels lovely I have to say, very silky and tactile - I could patted it all day. Which is lucky as it was meant to be a dog.

We covered the chocolate cake base in frosting so that our fondant would stick. The whole thing is double iced.  I really feel that if I had all the facts before we started, I wouldn't have started. But we were now in too deep, people were relying on us, money had changed hands, lives would be changed - or altered, slightly altered.

The base cake with it's dress on.

Fondant needs loving care as it is smoothed on, you need to work efficiently and thoroughly. Lucky Sue was there. Those are her hands smoothing. I was busy making Finn.

In fact Sue made his arms and I made his body and then we jointly fashioned his head. He was still a bit floppy and had to be propped up on things. Our body of knowledge on how to make dry gum stick to other dry gum was limited and so we stuck toothpicks all through him. He was a booby trap waiting for a small child.

After we hacked away at the rounded hemisphere cake, it was a bit smaller than planned, so the whole cake was a bit shorter in the "neck" region. It was around 10pm at night and we were losing the ability to care.  We rolled yellow arms and jammed them under the top section, with no idea of how a professional might do it.

My dog has no nose.. how does he smell?! Like sweetened cardboard...

We had a few goes at the dogs nose. Full disclosure - I messed the first one up. I poked it and prodded it so many times that it fell to pieces and I made another one. Sue had made the first one and now just let me struggle over the second one. Which was fitting.

disembodied nose.

It's hard to get the dog to smile. Or look positive. For a start he has no pupils in his eyes and so the expression has to come from the mouth - which is kinda... hard. If you look at the first pic, the internet version, Jake the Dog looks like he is.. happy.

Only six hours later!

Our Jake the Dog looks, well, like he is patiently putting up with having a kid on his head - which is probably fine.

It took six hours. No wonder people pay a fortune for them. Gabe woke up the next day to the cake and almost fell into a heap of delight. "It's... it's spectacular" he said. And he meant it.

He told everyone that Sue and I made it and the party was a success (I contracted the actual party out to professionals).

Will, in the front and Gabe at the back. Cake excitement!

As he cut it he said "I love you Mum. Can I have a Minecraft Cake next year?".