According to our schedule, last Saturday was the final stand for the undefeated Killer Penguins. I'd offered to make a cake for their celebratory end-of-season party. Of course, I didn't know at the time that the end of season party would be scheduled on Mam's birthday. It prompted us to have her party the previous day. And it prompted me to take the entire week off work to complete two cakes at once. In typical Killer Penguins fashion, they vanquished the competition.
Mam scored three baskets and her teammates scored many more. The other team might have scored three total. I was glad they scored, at least.
This basketball season was so much fun. The coaches were great, the girls really enjoyed each other and played really well. Not surprisingly, that meant I wanted to make a really special cake for them. I started experimenting with making fondant figurines. I'd never tried that before and wasn't the least bit sure I could pull it off. I liked my killer penguins though...and judging by the number of people who asked me where I'd found them, I'd say other people did too.
I wanted an "icy" look to the cake, so I chose not to blend all the color into the fondant and make it marble-y.
And knowing I had a team and siblings to feed, I put it together just like Mam's ladybug cake.
It sat like that for a couple of days, which was a pity because it didn't look nearly as marble-y by the time I got to decorating it. We had to go to several stores before we found an appropriate basketball hoop. I just couldn't imagine making an edible one of those. Store #3, which was out of them, called store #4 and put it on hold for us. I made a little lake and piped on some snow.
I added borders to both layers and carefully started placing penguins. Note to self...it's much easier to have a consistent border if your cake is in the middle of the plate.
As a final touch, Daddy helped me engineer a dunking penguin.
Somewhere along the line, I got an e-mail saying the reservation at the restaurant was for 46 people. I briefly panicked and made a quick sheet cake...which was, um, not particularly attractive, but functional. Driving the cake over to the pizzeria was a little dicey and dunking penguin didn't show up entirely intact, but it was easy to fix and the cake went over well. The crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Mam and most important, she got her trophy, as the coaches described her as a "little fireball". Ah, yes. Fireball, indeed.
Naturally, it turns out that the coach's schedule was wrong. The Penguin's last game is this coming Saturday, overlapping with Mam's first softball game. There won't be any more cake.
1 comment:
wow...what a seriously cool cake!!!
Post a Comment