The Cake that Made Me Cry

Goodness gracious, has it really been over 2 months since my last post?!?  Happy 2011 everyone!  I know I have a lot of catching up to do so please be patient!

To say the end of 2010 was a whirl-wind is a gigantic understatement!  We had six straight weeks of fabulous family events to attend (nearly all of them out of town, which meant we were home for four days - at best - then gone again for three days or more.)  Fitting in all the Thanksgivings and Christmases every year is already hectic; add in a bridal shower for my then SIL to be, the happy couple's wedding weekend and my son's First Birthday and you've got a recipe for exhaustion!!  And I wouldn't change one minute of it!  I promise to do a post on the wedding festivities and Christmases soon; tonight I recount D's birthday!

D turned 1 on New Year's Eve...and I am still trying to figure out where the past year has gone.  I remember preparing for A and C's first birthday.  The parties (yes, they had three first birthday parties), the cakes, the one-year pictures...I was so excited they were about to be "a whole number"!  It was their second birthday, for some reason, that was much harder for me to accept.  I guess I should have realized once they turned 1 that turning 2 was the next big milestone.  Sometimes the mommy-brain takes over, though, and the obvious things don't seem so obvious!

For D it is different.  Every one of his "firsts" is our last.  The last "first" time one of my babies would learn to smile.  The last "first" laugh.  The last "first" baby hug.  The last "first" tooth.  And last Sunday, D debuted his walking skills - his first real steps on his own without someone standing 2 steps in front of him.  Another last "first".  When D was born, we decided our family is complete. But that only makes all of these firsts harder.  The night he started taking 1-2 steps on his own at the beginning of December, I cried (okay, sobbed) the entire time. 

Sunday was a little different, I guess because I had been preparing for it.  He just stood up in the middle of the living room, gave me a huge grin and started toward me.  I was about 6-7 feet away in the kitchen where I squatted down, arms outreached, and cheered him on!  I was still a little surprised when he took off without any prompting, but A and C were standing there next to me just as excited as I was!  (Nick had *just* left to go to the Colts game with some friends - so I think God decided to give me a special gift that day because He knew I was super bummed I was not going to the game!)  And so I have a walking, talking (okay, so he says like 6 words, but it's a start!) one year old who loves to laugh and sing (loudly) and play peek-a-boo with his sisters, and my dishtowels!!

While Sunday capped off an amazing birthday weekend for D, in the two days prior I had my own "first".  My first attempt at baking and decorating a cake.  For the girls' birthday this summer, I drove 45 minutes to the south side of town to pick up two cakes I paid $50 for that were okay but who really wants to pay $50 for okay?  It was on that day I decided I could bake and decorate a cake (how hard could it be, really?!?) and for a lot less money!  Thus, this memorable "first" was born. 

I have two wonderful friends who offered to lend me a #1 cake pan (thanks Meg!) and her decorating tips, icing colors, and homemade icing recipe (thanks Jennifer!) which made my preparation even easier.  Thursday night, two days before the party, I made sure I had icing bags, cake mix, ingredients for icing - I felt so prepared!  Friday, New Year's Eve, we took the kids to the Children's Museum and then out to dinner (our little family tradition) for D's birthday.  Then we came home, celebrated NYE and had the kids in bed about 9:45pm. 

I got the icing made (I got to use the new stand mixer I got for Christmas, thanks Mom and Dad!) - I actually laughed at one point at how easy it is to make "homemade" anything with this mixer!  I really didn't do anything but pour the ingredients in then stand there and laugh at my domesticated self while the mixer did all the work.  (Nick thought I was crazy, but remember, it's at least 11pm and I'm in the beginning stages of a birthday cake!)  Before I proceed, you know should know that I do my best work under pressure.  Just ask my college roommate!  You may call it procrastination; I call it necessitated focus! 

Can not figure out how to rotate my picture...but you get the idea!

The cake was out of the oven and cooling as I attempted to make an educated guess on how much of each color icing I needed to mix up.  I wanted to match a plate I bought for the party, so I would need blue, yellow and red.  For some reason, I thought this would be easy.  Lesson #1: when doing something for the first time, go simple!  All one color would have been a good idea! 



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It's 11:55pm when my husband came up from the basement to remind me that it's NYE.  I took a 10-15 minute break to enjoy a drink with my honey (Bailey's and milk...mmmm!) and ring in 2011!  Then back to work I went.  Everything was ready so I started with the blue icing.  It went on pretty well, but it seemed to be a little runny.  I finished up the blue (the main part of the cake) and put everything in the fridge.  I figured the icing would do better if it was cold, and I felt confident in my icing abilities so I called it a night.  The party's not til 2pm, when D usually wakes up from his nap...I've got all day! 



The next morning, I found a million other things to do.  Mostly cleaning and straightening up, getting the other food together and entertaining the girls who can not seem to entertain themselves on this day.  At 11:15am, D went down for his nap and I jumped in the shower.  Finally!  I just needed to finish getting ready and ice the cake.  Uh-oh.  D woke up at noon and was, of course, a mess.  He really needs his 3 hour naps...45 minutes was not going to cut it! 



It didn't - he passed out during presents and slept through cake!  Good thing we sang to him before presents!


My parents arrived about 12:45 so I put Jeeps on kid-duty while Mia made a gigantic pan (a roaster actually) of mac and cheese.  I took the cake and icing out of the fridge and start on the yellow.  It looked great...for about 30 seconds.  Apparently the icing was getting warm as I was squeezing it down the icing bag (because I put too much in at a time) and warm icing does not pipe well.  It just melts.  No problem; I put everything back in the fridge for a few minutes.  Didn't work - still too warm.  My dad suggested putting it in the freezer!  Great idea!  Except the decorating tips I was using are metal and while the icing in the bag got cold, the icing inside the tip froze.  This is going from bad to worse! 

I tried to ice the cake anyway, with warm icing.  Why?  I don't know, because I was panicking?!  But as I mentioned before, warm icing just melts.  And I watched as it slid hopelessly down the side of my cake.  And I cried.  I just stood there and cried as I watched my hours of preparation literally melt away.  I escaped to the bathroom to get it together, then called Nick who was already at the store to have him bring home a can of icing so I could finish this cake.  As I piped the store-bought icing along the outer edge of the cake, I felt defeated.  Both my mom and my mother-in-law tried to comfort me by offering to run to Target to pick up a new cake - but in my stubbornness, I kept telling them "that wasn't the point." 

Overall, the cake tasted pretty good and looked okay from far away so I can't complain too much.  But there's always room for improvement!  Come August, I will be searching for a themed cake pan (probably a castle or a princess crown) and will begin preparations for cakes #2 and #3...because it can't get any worse, right?! 

Happiest First Birthday to my little man!!

Looking tired!  I don't think he made it 20 more minutes after this picture!

He would *not* wear this at the party - but a couple days later it was a great new toy!  Boys!

"The Plate" - notice my cake has no red on the outer edges!

We staged his cake pictures and video last night!