Cake-n-Bake Challenge

It was so much fun. Having family and friends over with some really great food.

We do this once a month. Have a cooking challenge where we all get together to eat, talk and vote on the "best" for the month.

We even have a little trophy and ribbons :D What better way to spend a day - than food, family and friends.

This month it was CAKE. And I love cake. But then I love ice cream and candy and...well I love sweets.

Anyway, here are the entries:

This photo really doesn't do them justice. I am going to need to take a photography class. I just never capture the "full" impact. Like the winning entry on the left, it was a cascading tower of flowers. Each flower so intricate and delicate...unbelievable. And the cake with the strawberry gelee in the front, it was surrounded with pretty pink flowers. Yeah, it seems that the theme was strawberries but that was just great minds thinking alike...I guess.

Or Steve's chocolate ganache, filled with banana pudding...there just aren't words to describe them all . . . other than yumilicious!

I guess I didn't get the strawberry theme memo tho' - I went for Memorial Day Theme with Lady Liberty.

My son was a little - maybe a lot - disappointed that I used fondant. It never tastes as good as whipped cream and fruit...it's true. But it's like being a kid again and playing with PlayDoh, it's so much fun I just can't resist.

Here's how I did her:

I made a Barbie cake - yeah kind of cheating - the doll part wasn't edible. But it's for fun. I had to spray paint her green...and she's rubber-at least her arms and face (the body's plastic) and paint doesn't stick very well to rubber. So I had to sand her a little to make her (more) tacky ;D and then I stepped outside and sprayed away. I stuck her in a styrofoam cup so the paint wouldn't get on anything. Then I put her on a paper plate, because she was dripping.

I glued a little crown on her head and even did two just to see how they'd turn out.

I went with the dark green girl. Kind of looking like Elphaba :D

After I had the doll done, I started frosting the cake base for the fondant to adhere to.

 Then all that was left was the fondant, which I rolled out and tried to fit to the form. For the base, I stamped bricks into some marzipan (to add a good taste and a different texture) then I stamped water into blue fondant (because we all know Lady Liberty stands in on an island in the middle of water...right?)
and I made some little blue balls to cover the bottom. I had to pipe a bit around Lady Liberty and the base because they didn't fit perfectly. I also added a couple of fondant flowers to fill in some gaps and Wah-Lah, I was done.

I put a sparkler in her scepter and lit the little firework to send showers of sparks all over the table.

But the best part of the day wasn't even the cake...it was seeing family and friends.

I really tried to get a picture of Caroline and Sasha curled up kissing but (like I said) I'm not the best photographer in the world, maybe I'm even the worst. But here they are together. :D