Not long before this post I had a retirement celebration cake post for this person. So when her sister asked me to make a cake for her for another retirement celebration that her family was throwing for her I was a little befuddled because I put my all into that last cake. When this sister called me and asked me to do the cake just like the last one but not tiered and no clovers, I was once again befuddled. So I went with the old standby, what colors are you decorating in? She said orange and green. So I had to ask, dark, bright, pastel? "I don't know it's orange and green. Not 4-H green not evergreen just green." With time being of the essence I said OK and starting trying to figure out how to do this cake.
I did three cakes again of different sizes but did not tier them. Knowing my pallet was green and orange I threw in a little white to balance things out and went to work. The first cake I decorated with a white base and orange and green polka dots. The next cake had an green base with orange polka dots, and the last cake had a orange base with green polka dots. Mind you I still had two issues. The first was that I still didn't think these cakes said, "Aggie." The second problem was that I did not know exactly what shades of green and orange I needed to match the decorations, so it either matched or clashed. I had no idea and no way to fix it at this point. Since there was no way to address the second problem I went straight to the first. To make this cake more Aggie like I worked with a new medium, color flow. Essentially it is an egg white powder that you mix with water and confectioners sugar to make a writable and edible objects to put on cakes. I decided for my first time out to make an A and a R, the retirees initials. Now please don't think that I am so talented to do this on my own, I printed out the letters and placed wax paper on top of them so that I could trace them with the color flow. It take 24-48 hours for this to dry and then you peel it off the wax paper and place on top of the cake. So I waited until the next day and packaged up the letters in a Ziploc with instructions to place on the cake.
Believe it or not this was a particularly busy weekend for cakes, so this one I delivered to my office for the family to pick up since the party would be on Saturday and I had to travel to Virginia for the rest of the weekends cakes. Now here is the other kicker. I was told the party was a surprise. So when I got a call at 5 pm on the Friday before the party saying the cake had not been picked up, I was slightly panicked. We could not call the honoree because she did not know about the cake or the party (I found out later that she knew about the party, but not the cake) so who would we call? the sister who contacted me did not answer at the number I had. Fortunately, our receptionist at the office, thought to call another sister to come get the cake. Unfortunately the letters got left behind when the cake got picked up so the final Aggie touches were never put on the cake.
After the event, I was told that Aggie was tickled with the cake. As a matter of fact her daughter apparently walked in after the celebration program and took the small cake and put it away for herself and left the two larger cakes for the rest of the crowd. As it turned out the colors on the cake matched the decorations to a T. Aggie had no idea about the cakes until she walked back and saw them, and I was happy to add to her special day, again.
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