I can too keep a secret on LJ - The shoes
It is often hard for me to keep a secret, especially since I regularly drain my brain onto lj. But I have proof that it IS possible. We got a request more than a month ago from lorebubeck to do a birthday cake which was due today. Since the recipient molly_world is on my friends list the request was made that I not discuss the cake.
Now that the event is over and the surprise is sprung we can talk about it!
Note this is a public post so that people can find the link to the shoe pics.
shoe cake 070, originally uploaded by OrlaCarey.
Last Saturday feymaker came over to make the shoe blanks with thehonorablellt. They were made out of gumpaste, which I had picked up from the cake store in Laurel the night I had dinner with flt and devilvern. Since we didn't want to have issues with the cats we ended up inverting a large bowl over the shoe blanks.
Thursday we used some of the left over gumpaste to create decorations and glued them on with a slurry made of gumpaste and water. It was at this point that I broke the heel off of the first shoe I picked up. Funny that, when I coiled a snake of gumpaste around the heel I must have put too much pressure on it. This would be an irritation for the entire project because no matter what I tried it never stayed in place. I should have just hit it with some super glue but that would have made it inedible. We let these sit under the bowl overnight and then painted them on Friday.
In order to paint them we went through the gel cake food coloring that I had collected and once again observed that I tend to buy a lot of blue and red - but not much else. Most of the stuff I have is old enough that we need to get rid of it and buy new. However we won't be buying blue for quite a while. So in the end we had several shades of blue, three of red, a mauve, brown, violet, burgundy, yellow, orangey-gold and black. We also used some standard green food coloring because I didn't find the cake gel stuff until after LLT had already done her green shoe. I did mine with the cake gel stuff though. This does explain some of the color choices for the shoes though since we were rather limited to what we had. We also hit the shoes with bits of luster dust in places but that was limited because the colors never really stopped being sticky.
While we were painting we were also baking the cake. LLT wanted to make her favorite cake, the white chocolate whisper cake (from the Cake Bible) that we made for flt and devilvern's wedding. So that's what we made. Actually I should say that's what LLT made since she took the lead on the baking this time. Based on her memory of the last time we made the cake LLT was positive that we needed to make a double batch for the 8 small loaf cakes. She made the double batch and when it filled the bowl of the mixer we decided that should be for the sheet cake instead. So we filled the 1/2 sheet pan - and realized that if the cake rose any we'd have an issue. So we pulled out the cupcake pans and ended up making 2 dozen cupcakes pulling the batter out of the filled cake pan. LLT used the last of the eggs to make the single batch for the small loaves. This of course left the issue that we needed egg whites for the frosting so I headed to the grocery store for egg whites, eggs and sausage for breakfast. It was late enough though that we decided to wait until morning to start the hour long process of making the frosting.
In the morning, while LLT was making breakfast she opened up the egg whites since I was getting ready to make the frosting. She said "did you open this already?" and I said "no". I had not noticed it when I bought the container that the inner seal had been pushed in. So we headed back to the Safeway to return the package. LLT went with me and she went to get our morning Starbucks while I headed to the back of the store to get the new egg whites. Problem though, I had originally bought a large container of whites and there weren't any left. So I grabbed one of the small containers and thought "hey I should double check the inner seal". It was busted. Next container? Busted. I checked 3 containers and they were all busted - so I ended up grabbing them and a container of 18 eggs to see if they would let me exchange for the eggs instead. The clerk said that since the eggs were buy one get one free we could get the other set as well. So LLT ended up going back to get those so she could see the cool thing I found on the way back to the eggs - some metallic plates in gold and red. I'd thought we could get them (they were buy one get one free as well) to present the high table cakes on. I was still trying to decide what I wanted from Starbucks so we traded places. When she came back with the eggs she had found them in silver as well so now we have red, silver and gold. They worked well for the cakes and I can see them being useful in the future.
One of the problems we had was that even after sitting overnight the shoes were still tacky. We got the bright idea of putting them in the oven at a low temp. frederich was uncertain it would work but we figured out that the oven would go down to 170 degrees and we put them in for about half an hour. Toward the end one of the shoes started to melt and that's when we decided to pull them out. Luckily once it cooled it hardened again. While curing the paint didn't solve the problem it did make things much better. While the paint was still tacky it at least stopped coming off on our hands.
While we finished icing the cakes frederich took the first set of pictures and we headed out to the site at about 1 pm. Luckily the event was only in the next town over so we got there in about half an hour. About 3:30 we put the shoes on the cakes (still in the car) so we could get pictures. The plan was to present the cakes during feast.
This actually worked out pretty well since the organizers of the event decided to have a boasting contest. We arranged to be part of the contest. During dinner I said to LLT "so have you figured out what you're going to say?" which led to us working out a script. As LLT had walked into the hall someone had stopped her to talk about the rapier that was presented at the Ponte Alto Investiture a few years ago. LLT said she was going to turn that into the boast. I said I only had one problem with that - I was the one who made that rapier - LLT was busy cooking the rest of the feast that day. So we came up with the plan that LLT would tell the story using "I" and I would slap her and she'd say "ummm...WE". The problem of this of course was that the first slap was a bit harder than I'd intended (it echoed in the hall) and so instead LLT acted afraid and made sure to say "we".
So the boast was that we can make anything in sugar and we could prove it. We headed out to the car and grabbed the cakes (helped by several people). We came in and presented the cakes first to molly_world and then gave one to each of the people sitting at high table. The populace cake was in the back of the hall and I sliced it into pieces so people would eat it.
The shoes got all of the reaction we had hoped for. molly_world LOVED them. The Baroness of Lochmere was sitting at high table and she apparently sent her daughter a pic through her cell phone to which she got the text back "where ARE you?". So the B&B of Lochmere took 3 of the shoes home with them. molly_world also took 3 home and 2 actually got partially eaten.
People liked the cake as well and I was happy to see that more than half of the populace cake got eaten. A couple of people took the rest home. Since the high table pieces were too large for any one person to eat the extras of those got taken home as well. All in all it was a success.
Now that the event is over and the surprise is sprung we can talk about it!
Note this is a public post so that people can find the link to the shoe pics.
shoe cake 070, originally uploaded by OrlaCarey.
Last Saturday feymaker came over to make the shoe blanks with thehonorablellt. They were made out of gumpaste, which I had picked up from the cake store in Laurel the night I had dinner with flt and devilvern. Since we didn't want to have issues with the cats we ended up inverting a large bowl over the shoe blanks.
Thursday we used some of the left over gumpaste to create decorations and glued them on with a slurry made of gumpaste and water. It was at this point that I broke the heel off of the first shoe I picked up. Funny that, when I coiled a snake of gumpaste around the heel I must have put too much pressure on it. This would be an irritation for the entire project because no matter what I tried it never stayed in place. I should have just hit it with some super glue but that would have made it inedible. We let these sit under the bowl overnight and then painted them on Friday.
In order to paint them we went through the gel cake food coloring that I had collected and once again observed that I tend to buy a lot of blue and red - but not much else. Most of the stuff I have is old enough that we need to get rid of it and buy new. However we won't be buying blue for quite a while. So in the end we had several shades of blue, three of red, a mauve, brown, violet, burgundy, yellow, orangey-gold and black. We also used some standard green food coloring because I didn't find the cake gel stuff until after LLT had already done her green shoe. I did mine with the cake gel stuff though. This does explain some of the color choices for the shoes though since we were rather limited to what we had. We also hit the shoes with bits of luster dust in places but that was limited because the colors never really stopped being sticky.
While we were painting we were also baking the cake. LLT wanted to make her favorite cake, the white chocolate whisper cake (from the Cake Bible) that we made for flt and devilvern's wedding. So that's what we made. Actually I should say that's what LLT made since she took the lead on the baking this time. Based on her memory of the last time we made the cake LLT was positive that we needed to make a double batch for the 8 small loaf cakes. She made the double batch and when it filled the bowl of the mixer we decided that should be for the sheet cake instead. So we filled the 1/2 sheet pan - and realized that if the cake rose any we'd have an issue. So we pulled out the cupcake pans and ended up making 2 dozen cupcakes pulling the batter out of the filled cake pan. LLT used the last of the eggs to make the single batch for the small loaves. This of course left the issue that we needed egg whites for the frosting so I headed to the grocery store for egg whites, eggs and sausage for breakfast. It was late enough though that we decided to wait until morning to start the hour long process of making the frosting.
In the morning, while LLT was making breakfast she opened up the egg whites since I was getting ready to make the frosting. She said "did you open this already?" and I said "no". I had not noticed it when I bought the container that the inner seal had been pushed in. So we headed back to the Safeway to return the package. LLT went with me and she went to get our morning Starbucks while I headed to the back of the store to get the new egg whites. Problem though, I had originally bought a large container of whites and there weren't any left. So I grabbed one of the small containers and thought "hey I should double check the inner seal". It was busted. Next container? Busted. I checked 3 containers and they were all busted - so I ended up grabbing them and a container of 18 eggs to see if they would let me exchange for the eggs instead. The clerk said that since the eggs were buy one get one free we could get the other set as well. So LLT ended up going back to get those so she could see the cool thing I found on the way back to the eggs - some metallic plates in gold and red. I'd thought we could get them (they were buy one get one free as well) to present the high table cakes on. I was still trying to decide what I wanted from Starbucks so we traded places. When she came back with the eggs she had found them in silver as well so now we have red, silver and gold. They worked well for the cakes and I can see them being useful in the future.
One of the problems we had was that even after sitting overnight the shoes were still tacky. We got the bright idea of putting them in the oven at a low temp. frederich was uncertain it would work but we figured out that the oven would go down to 170 degrees and we put them in for about half an hour. Toward the end one of the shoes started to melt and that's when we decided to pull them out. Luckily once it cooled it hardened again. While curing the paint didn't solve the problem it did make things much better. While the paint was still tacky it at least stopped coming off on our hands.
While we finished icing the cakes frederich took the first set of pictures and we headed out to the site at about 1 pm. Luckily the event was only in the next town over so we got there in about half an hour. About 3:30 we put the shoes on the cakes (still in the car) so we could get pictures. The plan was to present the cakes during feast.
This actually worked out pretty well since the organizers of the event decided to have a boasting contest. We arranged to be part of the contest. During dinner I said to LLT "so have you figured out what you're going to say?" which led to us working out a script. As LLT had walked into the hall someone had stopped her to talk about the rapier that was presented at the Ponte Alto Investiture a few years ago. LLT said she was going to turn that into the boast. I said I only had one problem with that - I was the one who made that rapier - LLT was busy cooking the rest of the feast that day. So we came up with the plan that LLT would tell the story using "I" and I would slap her and she'd say "ummm...WE". The problem of this of course was that the first slap was a bit harder than I'd intended (it echoed in the hall) and so instead LLT acted afraid and made sure to say "we".
So the boast was that we can make anything in sugar and we could prove it. We headed out to the car and grabbed the cakes (helped by several people). We came in and presented the cakes first to molly_world and then gave one to each of the people sitting at high table. The populace cake was in the back of the hall and I sliced it into pieces so people would eat it.
The shoes got all of the reaction we had hoped for. molly_world LOVED them. The Baroness of Lochmere was sitting at high table and she apparently sent her daughter a pic through her cell phone to which she got the text back "where ARE you?". So the B&B of Lochmere took 3 of the shoes home with them. molly_world also took 3 home and 2 actually got partially eaten.
People liked the cake as well and I was happy to see that more than half of the populace cake got eaten. A couple of people took the rest home. Since the high table pieces were too large for any one person to eat the extras of those got taken home as well. All in all it was a success.