Flipping Out Over this Birthday

I love a special request for a cake and this one didn't flip me out but it did let me have all sorts of fun. I have had the privilege of creating several cakes for this young lady. Hannah turned twelve this month and I happen to know she would sleep in her flip-flops if possible. So when her mother requested a flip flop cake it seemed perfectly normal.

This cake came from the Betty Crocker web site. There you find instructions on size, baking and even a template that you can print out to create the flip-flops. The only change was to make sure flowers were edible (not fabric or plastic) and fruit roll ups and candy could be replaced with icing (after all there really isn't such a thing as too much icing). To keep with the theme I used licorice for the straps but bedazzled them with icing balls to keep with the color scheme of the cake.

I understand the cake was a hit with the tweens who attended the party and the birthday girl flipped, which is always a relief. After all we wouldn't want it to be a flop.

It Was a Moo-ving Experience.

It was an utterly wonderful experience, and there is no bull about it. I have a bunch of these, so I apologize now, it came from a story I did on Cow Patty Bingo, however I digress. This is the moo-ving tale of a livestock agent, a surprise, and a cow cake (great elements right?).

I was having an e-mail discussion with a group I work with about a meeting. In the midst of all the details it came up that one of our livestock agents was having a birthday the day of our meeting. From there were chewed on the information and determined a cake was in order. The only issue was how would the cake get there because I was not going to be able to go. So my counterpart who was coming over to drop stuff off offered to pick up the cake and get it there. In the back of my head I was milking the information, trying to determine how she would get the cake over there without the livestock agent seeing it since they were riding together, but what the hey? I knew she could handle it.

There was a quick decision about the cake. A livestock agent meant animals could be used, especially pigs, goats, lambs, and cows. After a little more thought we determined the cow would be the most appropriate and I some how milked the situation to create a diary cow, instead of a beef cow which is what she really works with. My colleague picked up the cake from me the night before and disguised it in a trash bag in the back of the van for ride over to the meeting. When asked by the intended receipt what it was she said casually, "oh just some supplies" which was accepted without hesitation.

After making the trip across three counties, and having lunch the meeting was getting ready to commence. For those like myself who could not attend, we were hooking up via computer conference to the meetings. The twist here is that the birthday woman was also the technical person. So, as the story was told to me, as she is working at getting it all set up and having technical difficulties they brought the cake in, candles, singing and all and red faced about the difficulties I believe she told me her thoughts were, " are you kidding? Thanks, but right now."

In the end the technical difficulties were grazed over, the cake was cut, and chocolate seemed to so the the tension and add a special sugar high to the meeting. I told you it was a moo-ving story.