It may not be apparent from this photo that this is a birthday cake. Sorry about that. I finished this cake moments before I left for Brittany’s birthday dinner, and I decided in the end to not include any sort of textual indication that this was anything more than a cake with a dog on the top and an angry cat on the side. I’m going to write it off as artistic license, but really, it was poor time management. Per usual.
So I guess some context is necessary – Brittany is a friend, it was her 24th birthday this past weekend, and I made her a cake. She lives in an apartment in Brooklyn. The other night, she ordered takeout food at 4am and fell asleep before the food arrived. She’s a ballerina. On her actual birthday we watched 15 minutes of “The Muppets Take Manhattan” and “What About Bob” in its entirety while she nursed a hangover. She has a dog named Henry, and a cat named Lu. Henry considers Lu to be his best friend in the entire animal kingdom. Lu considers Henry to be a plague upon this earth.
With this one I really tried to focus on getting the basics down. Because after 6 months of this, with no formal training, I’m starting to see some bad habits develop. The most important part of learning to do anything well is to master the basics and then build off of those. I think. My problem is – I’ve got very little patience, and in order to crank out a cake canvas (straight fondant on a cake) that is flawless, patience is required. The ganoosh – you have to make that the day before, and let it set. Then there’s the baking, and the freezing overnight. Once you put the ganoosh on the cake, ideally you should let it set overnight, before you put the fondant on. Everything is overnight. Let it set overnight. Let it freeze overnight. Time is never a factor. As long as you are asleep at some point, it’s overnight.
So I did all of these things. I didn’t fudge it – instead of making the ganoosh and using it immediately, I planned ahead and let it set. I did it all. I even bought a cake leveler, which allows you to cut straight across a cake layer, making it completely level. And GUESS WHAT it was still shitty. Yeah. It was slanted, the fondant cracked, the ganoosh set so hard that the fondant didn’t even stick to it. Fail. Maybe that’s why I miscalculated the length of the green stripe and ended up a couple inches short and didn’t even bother to fix it. FRUSTRATION. I was so MAD I just put together the puppy and kitty and signed off. You may recognize that gray color on this cake – last week’s minesweeper cake did a number on my fondant reserves. I ended up with about 3 pounds of this gray color, and no white. I’m scraping the barrel, fondant-wise, and you’d better believe next week’s cake will also be mostly gray.
I put the cake in the tote and hauled it down to Brooklyn, where I introduced the cake to Brittany, and Henry to his face. Then I told Kaila and Donnelly to “act natural” because I wanted some “candid” shots.
Then I carried that thing all the way to the restaurant that may as well have been on the other side of the world. And did you know that trendy restaurants frown upon the practice of bringing one’s own dessert? Our waitress scoffed us as we sang happy birthday, and, not wanting to infuriate her further, we decided not to ask for silverware or plates, and ate the thing with our faces.
It took me 2 hours to make that slideshow in Adobe After Effects, by the way.
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