Cakes and Crochet

Abram is now the official "taste tester" of the beaters. This one passed his inspection!

Curtis was commissioned by a co-worker to make the groom's cake to be served at his rehearsal dinner  last week. He requested a "Block O", the logo for Ohio State, and so, that is what we made!

We had a few snags with this one. 

1.A white cake that didn't come out of the pan clean, requiring another cake. 

2. Bought a few buckeyes from a local candy store, only to find that they weren't really "buckeyes" but rather chocolate covered peanut butter balls with a dab of peanut butter added to the outsidHad kind of a nipple effect...and they would fall off...not good. So I got a recipe from my mom, sized it down from the 300 it was meant to make and made 37, two of which we used on the cake. 

3. Tried my hand at chocolate leaves. Process involved painting several layers of melted, colored butterscotch chips onto back of real (washed) leaf, freezing, then peeling off leaf. Time consuming but effect was well worth it!

4. Getting the perfect "O", with much measuring and calculating by Curtis and much "eyeballing" by me. 

5. Getting the icing to stick to "raw" sides of white cake that was so crumbly! We probably won't use white box mix again. We've got to make something that's a bit denser.

6. Making the right shade of "gray" icing...not as simple as adding black to white! It looked lavender and after a bit of googling, we went with my first instinct and added a bit of yellow. Perfect!

It was a challenge, but we faced it together and we were both very pleased with the final product! And so were the bride and groom and their family!

Lookin' snazzy for the wedding the next day. Mom and Dad were here and watched Abram for us so we could use this as a "date night".

Rather than make a cake for my birthday, we made a cake for one of the cleaning ladies for the Bats. She was also born on Oct. 24th! I had fun making chocolate shavings/curls and Curtis worked on basket weave and shells. He's getting pretty good! We used the scraps (the destroyed white cake and  the tops left from leveling) from the grooms cake and this cake to make some "cake balls" for me. Yum! We've had way too much sugar this month!

The weather has gotten cooler, so my crocheting has started again! I've been working on several different projects, including these two Newborn beanies that I gave as a baby shower gift this weekend. Newborn beanies are so quick and easy...and SO cute!