A Weekend of Cake

So My weekend started yesterday with a day full of cake making and strawberry festivity, with a dash of competitive group gaming.

First the Cake making. So this Sunday, as some of you may be aware, is Pentecost. For those of you who do not know, it is more or less when the Holy Spirit descended on a bunch of witnesses, there was some fire, and some tongues on fire, and then there were a bunch of new Christians (which for the faith only being around for a whole 50 to 100 days (this is disputed), this is a big deal). You can also go here or you know, to a Church tomorrow,  to find out more. Anyway, Shadyside uses this day as the Church's birthday, and as an extension holds a birthday celebration for all of the Church members. For any good birthday, you need cake. And if you are me, you make a special cake like the ones found here or here.

After work on Thursday, I stopped by the local Walmart, and picked up some cake mix and frosting:

You can do so much with this...

 Then on Friday I started making the 6 total cakes I would need to complete my project. I spent most of the day baking, doing laundry and watching Jericho (great show... ).

This is only the beginning.

 A side note about the weather here. It was super sunny all morning, and was up until 1:30. Then at 1:45 I heard a faint smacking on the air conditioner in the kitchen, and then realized that I needed to turn the lights on to see because it was so dark outside. By 2 is was down pouring, complete with marble sized hail, and lots and lots of lightning. Of course I went outside to watch it, I love a good rain storm. Then by 3 it was back to being super sunny. So weird.

Ok, so on Friday I completed 2 layers of 'Classic Yellow' stacked, with a layer of chocolate in between, and then 2 layers of Funfetti with white frosting in between. So then Today (Saturday) I completed 2 layers of Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting in the middle. I then packed up and transported the monstrosity to Gwyn's house (I was helping her with some remodeling/cleaning/lifestyle changing).

My canvas. I feel like a Marble sculptor.

At this point, I started cutting.

I realize that there are not that many pictures of me... here is proof that my hair is normal.

Mmmmm Cake.

Frosting Time.

One of the benefits of having an art master around is much more efficient and proficient color selection and sprinkle (or Jimmys if you are from Pittsburgh) placement. Thanks to Gwyn who was my color mixer and selector.

First you get the sides, then you get the top. C done and Jimmied

We mixed a lot of frosting.

Almost done... but something is missing.

Ah yes, the P 'hole'

There was a little debate as to the implementation of the 'P.' It was either cut out the P hole, or just frost it. If it were to be cut out, it would athsetetically look better, but it would be very hard to cut out, and very hard to frost. There is also a general rule of thumb that you want to maximize the about of  cake in the cake, and not cut out, so based on the presented arguments, the P hole was simply frosted in.

So currently the creation is wrapped in a very elaborate foil covering that only Chelsea could truly appreciate. In leu of trying to transport it to my house, then take it out of my car, and then get it to Church in the morning, it is residing on the Rohrer's stove for the evening. Thus only one trip.

I would say another successful cake made. Ill let you know the reception tomorrow.

An idea that my mother gave me while talking about this cake is what to do with the left over cake material, or negative cake. Larry really enjoys this, as the remnants only last a few day (if not hours) in the house. But this time there was going to be 3 cakes worth of remnants. So my mother suggested Cake Balls! Which turned out great! The general idea is to cover small bite sized balls of Cake in chocolate. So after crumbling the leftover from the Funfetti cake (or the P), some frosting was added to help stick balls together. Then the balls were rolled in melted chocolate to form covered balls. These turned out awesome. Some work needs to be done on the correct implementation and chocolate use, as the chocolate we used was a little sticky, and made rolling difficult. But still they turned out great!

So much cake...

Baller

And covered.

As you can see, Gwyn did a lot of work on these, she perfected the roll technique. We ended up making about 2 dozen of them, they are awesome! Certainly looking forward to experimenting with this desert!

The damaged Kitchen