Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Puppy at the Beach

If you follow this blog you will notice that I make many of my cakes for people I work with. An earlier post was a cake for a co-worker that was leaving and sure enough so is this one. You could almost say that this blog could serve as a future job listing sight. However, I digress. Once again a co-worker came to me and asked if I could make a cake for someone who was leaving our office, lets call her Mandie. Mandie worked as a tourism agent and although that might seem like a wide open area to make a cake from, non of those ideas quite seem to fit her personality. However in her spare time she enjoyed camping on the beach, her dogs, and of course her boyfriend. Having not ever met him it made it difficult to include him in the cake, however the dogs who I have heard story after story about (they really are quite cute in the photos) so that was really a no brainer. We also know how much she enjoys her beach time and camping.
So the cake was to be a 3-D dog on the beach. I baked the normal butter cake and went for it. You would think since I had done this before it would be easy however mother nature decided to mess with me this time. It was humid and just starting to rain as the cake was cooling so the moist cake ended up with a neck break when I went to freeze it. I wasn't too worried because icing is a little like super glue it can fix anything. When it came time I decorated the cake got it fixed but was worried it would not hold, so I put it in the refrigerator. During the night it finally rained, and rained and rained allowing things not to dry like they needed to. Needless to say when I opened the refrigerator the cute, adorable little pup that I had shoved in there the night before, was headless. I examined the situation, loaded icing bags, tips dowel rods and my pipe cutter (to cut the dowel rods) and headed to the office (I admit I did brush my teeth, shower, and dress before I loaded up and left).
At the office I began again. Used two dowel rods to stabilize the cake, icing, and a lot of prayer. I got the cake up and spread brown sugar around it to make it look like the pup was on the beach. However I could not help but notice that the head was starting to slide forward. I fixed it again and took photos but at this point there was nothing left to do. The head broke into several pieces as it slid off the body and make it look like the pup had buried his head in the sand. Of course I told Mandie that he lost his head because he was so upset over her leaving. Although it was not the most beautiful outcome, the cake still tasted good and we were able to give her photos of what the original intent was. Next time I will check the weather before deciding to cook at 3-D cake when it is raining.

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