Cake Boss

I have a love-hate relationship with making cake.  Here is a list of things I love about it: flipping through recipes; finding the just-right flavour combinations; sketching out the cake; searching out the ingredients; prepping everything.

Here is a list of things I hate about it: making the actual cake!  OK.  Not entirely true.  Here's the deal.  I know how to make the individual components.  I've nailed down the process of assembly.  I've learned alot of tricks along the way.  In theory, I should have a majestic cake.  In my mind, it will be layered and tiered.  Light and airy.  Frosted whimsically, adorned and then displayed.
 

So, what's the problem?

Cakes fall.  Usually not literally, but often they will just deflate in the oven.  Buttercream will break.  Fondant will crack.  Things will melt, slide, topple, squish out, droop, flatten, crumble, crush, squash, sag, buckle, sweat (yup, buttercream can do this!), and black out (well, not the cake but me if all the aforementioned things happen!) 

 

Get it now?

So, despite the tip-toeing around the kitchen (so the cakes rise in the oven), and coddling and cojoling the buttercream (beat, beat, beat, refridgerate), and the general kanoodling (a few sweet nothings never hurt!), the relationship with the cake is always a little strained.

But just when you think that things are heading south, something unexpected happens.  You get a glimpse of that magnificient image that was in your mind - but now it's emerging before you.  And what was so overwhelming just minutes before is now quickly becoming breathtaking.  Love is in the air!

 And it was with love (and a whole heck of nerves) that I baked this cake for my sister and her soon-to-be husband last year.

Hey sis!  If you're reading this blog (as you should be!), I hope you liked it!  But don't expect anything else soon.  OK, maybe I'll make you those nectarine cupcakes you were clammering about.....

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!