In a weak moment, fueled no doubt by the wine, I agreed to produce a cake for an upcoming neighborhood baby shower. I decided on carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting. I was initially told that there would be upwards of 40 guests, so I thought I'd make two layers. As the numbers declined to less than 30, I decided to keep it to one layer. As it was, I baked more than enough. That's what happens when I wake up at 3:30 a.m. and start to panic. No good decisions are made at 3:30 in the morning. My oven sucks, so I'd started baking the day before in my neighbor's oven. The early morning mess centered around my oven. Hence the varying colors of the same cake. grrrr. Now to make something cute out of all this cake!
Neighbor John kindly provided a 20" square board. I covered it with blue fabric, then covered the fabric with clear acetate.
The happy parents-to-be know that the baby is a boy. After deciding that a "snakes and snails and puppy dog tails" cake was just too weird (see here), the hostess was relieved that I decided to stay on theme. I took inspiration from the invitation. The train is very cute and colorful. "I can do this!" I said to myself, kind of like the good ol' boy's famous last words, "Here hold my beer-- watch this!"
Template cutting and cake assemby took several hours. I did have a lot of cake leftover, but I was glad to have the wiggle room with all the mistakes I made. Gives "measure twice cut once" a whole new meaning.
Icing had to go on in several layers, and took another 3 hours. Crumb coat to start, then more white where the white would show. Then the blue. It's starting to take shape.
Et voila! The final product. A little rough around the edges. Note to self: carrot cake is not the best kind of cake for fancy icing. Too crumbly. But it sure was tasty, and it was a big hit at the shower.
