It’s a Mans World

And based on the men I know, their world would involve fire somehow. I don’t know what it is, but men seem to like fire.

A recent order came in requesting favors for a husband’s 40th birthday party. There was no “theme” per say but she did say she was going to have a few things printed up with “40 & Hot”. My thought process went from Man…Hot…Fire.  Flames!  And so I designed these 40’s that are on fire.  Super fun to make and in my opinion a super cool and unique theme for such a milestone birthday.

Dew my inspiration from this cool car flame

Wanted it to be a fuller flame around the 40 so I drew it up using a Bic marker

Then went to town 🙂 Happy Birthday Curt 🙂

Oh and I have to thank Pinterest for this order. Small world it is…the super nice woman who placed this order lives in Bellingham, Washington…where I WENT TO COLLEGE!!! I couldn’t believe it. Testament that social media does in fact work 🙂

The Cake That Couldn’t Break Me

If you saw my post from earlier today you know I baked a couple cakes to play with today. I need one for Monday’s cake decorating class and the other for my friend’s brunch tomorrow. I’ve been really looking forward to this brunch! I was assigned to bring a fruit salad…lord knows I love fruit so it was a perfect pairing. However, she also said, and I quote,

Should you have any type of homemade pastry/baked good hanging around the house, feel free to bring it with you on Sunday…I mean, why feed the raccoons of Bellingham when you can feed the girls of Arlington..? 🙂

So what’s a sugar crazed girl gonna do? Bake a cake!

Thank you to my sister-in-law who thought of me when she saw this amazingly beautiful cake on Pinterest. I Am Baker is an amazing site for things like this 🙂 Gorgeous! And since I was pretty good with making the rosettes I figured I should give it a whirl 🙂

Ran into a few hurdles along the way, but I was bound and determined to clear em.

First…Ran out of buttercream. I’ve never used buttercream before, but figured I needed quite a bit so I doubled the recipe, which by the way is SCRUMPTIOUS!! However it only made enough to frost the cake and make the roses around the sides.

Second…During mid-cake clean up my hubby crunched my only 1M decorating tip in the garbage disposal because I was an airhead and dumped out the cup they were soaking in. Never never never put the cup you are using to soak tips in the sink…always keep on the counter so you think about what you are doing! Nothing that a quick trip to the local Michael’s craft store can’t fix!

Third…My daughter who I swear grows an inch a week is either taller than she appears or used her go-go gadget arms and stuck a little finger in one of the side roses for an unofficial tasting.

Fourth…New batch of frosting tint doesn’t quiet match the tint for the side roses. Maybe after it sits a bit it’ll blend.

and Fifth…The cake is all done, pictures are taken and I’m happy. If you’ve ever seen the Food Network Cake Challenges you know it’s not over until you move the cake to the table. In my case, move the cake into the cake holder. My finger slipped when pushing the cake board back and whoops! there went my finger through one of the roses. My personal touch I guess 😉

Regardless…I’m happy with the cake for the first time making something like this. It’s pretty and I can’t wait to share it with my wonderful friends. The best part…I used milk chocolate mousse filling in the middle of the layers!! If you haven’t heard of this, it’s like heaven and you can find the recipe on one of my earlier posts here.