First off I want to say that I got tons of support on my last post! Thank you everyone for all your wonderful comments and support. I couldn't do this without any of you.
Friday night was crazzzzzy! I had an order of truffles for Friday night from a friend. She took her grandmother out for her birthday and since she knows that her grandmother is such a chocoholic, she asked me to make some truffles for her. Grandma loved them! It makes me so happy to see one of my customers enjoying a surprise like that :)
Then my little brother had a birthday party yesterday for his best friend/show buddy and his brother. She took them all to a trampoline park! Can you imagine taking nine ten year old boys to a trampoline park and giving them all cake???? A few weeks ago their mom asked me to do their birthday cake. Since there was a ton of little boys literally bouncing off the walls and the party was in an uncontrolled environment she asked for a cupcake cake.
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She wanted half chocolate and half vanilla cupcakes covered in camo buttercream with a pink browning logo. The colors are a little off in the picture because it was taken at 3 in the morning and our lighting isn't exactly studio worthy. The pink was actually a very bright hot pink. I am so proud of how this cake turned out. I used a new technique I'd never heard of before and to be honest was a little nervous to try it. But it totally worked!!!
I am still fairly new to the cake decorating world, and this was my first cupcake cake. I must say, it was so much fun to make! Even if I didn't get to sleep until 4:30 this morning. NO it wasn't because this cake took me that long.......although it did take quite a bit longer than planned. This cake should only have taken maybe four hours to do, start to finish. I started baking around seven. Why did it take me five extra hours? Well let me tell you...
It all started when Mom and I went shopping with the kids to get my supplies I needed. We went into the city (city is a general term for any place that holds more than our 600 people) to go to Walmart, Petsmart, and Michaels. While at Walmart we met my grandparents who came to Dallas from Oklahoma for a doctor's appointment. Of course we had to stop and visit. Then we continued on with our shopping.
After shopping we headed home and I got started on my truffles order. While I worked on confections Mom worked on dinner. We had some awesome white chicken chili (I'll have to do a whole post on this later). Then after filling my stomach to the max I started on cupcakes. Twelve vanilla and twelve chocolate. She asked to include my super sweet buttercream, and I had to make chocolate buttercream for the camo pattern so I just did half and half. I had to make three batches of frosting for this cake, and I actually ended up using a new recipe for crusting buttercream. It is required of the technique I used to have crusting buttercream, and sometimes my typical throw-it-all-in-a-bowl-and-mix deliciousness doesn't really crust all that well.
I got my chocolate buttercream recipe from CakeCentral. I LOVE this site; it's like a forum where all different bakers from all around the world come on and post their recipes and ask questions. Everyone is always super nice and supportive. I got my vanilla buttercream recipe from Rose Bakes. She is another fellow blogger that I just love, she is super creative. I have subscribed to her blog and I save lots of her recipes. I also chose this recipe because she makes this for large cakes, and all the recipes I have seen before just don't make enough. This made so much that I had some left over.
After shopping we headed home and I got started on my truffles order. While I worked on confections Mom worked on dinner. We had some awesome white chicken chili (I'll have to do a whole post on this later). Then after filling my stomach to the max I started on cupcakes. Twelve vanilla and twelve chocolate. She asked to include my super sweet buttercream, and I had to make chocolate buttercream for the camo pattern so I just did half and half. I had to make three batches of frosting for this cake, and I actually ended up using a new recipe for crusting buttercream. It is required of the technique I used to have crusting buttercream, and sometimes my typical throw-it-all-in-a-bowl-and-mix deliciousness doesn't really crust all that well.
I got my chocolate buttercream recipe from CakeCentral. I LOVE this site; it's like a forum where all different bakers from all around the world come on and post their recipes and ask questions. Everyone is always super nice and supportive. I got my vanilla buttercream recipe from Rose Bakes. She is another fellow blogger that I just love, she is super creative. I have subscribed to her blog and I save lots of her recipes. I also chose this recipe because she makes this for large cakes, and all the recipes I have seen before just don't make enough. This made so much that I had some left over.
So half way through making icing my hubby texts me asking if I can bring him some dinner (he works the night shift at the county jail) because he had to take an inmate to the hospital. I told him it would be a while as I was making icing and had atleast two hours left on this cake. He said Ok and I went about finishing my icing. Right after I finish the chocolate and move on to the vanilla Dad calls the satellite people (our signal has been in and out for about a week now, don't worry he fixed it yesterday) so I can't run the mixer while hes on the phone. No worries, I can go ahead and put the chocolate base layer of frosting on the cupcakes. As I finished this Dad finished on the phone. Back to vanilla!
Alright so here comes the fun part......I said in my last post that we live on a cattle ranch and raise show cattle. My brother happens to be showing one of our top prize winning heifer's babies. When Dad got off the phone he went to turn the cattle out of the barn into a big pen with hay for the night. He came in after turning out and says that Robby's heifer is bloated...bloat is bad. It means something is wrong with her stomach and air is trapped in her belly. This will make her belly twice the size it should be (incredibly painful), potentially killing her if we don't get it fixed quickly. Mom, Robby and Dad bundle up and head to the barn. I was so close to finishing this frosting so I went ahead and finished then covered it so I could go outside and help. When I got outside Dad already had her intubated (a garden hose shoved down her throat), and the air was released. Immediate crisis averted! But you can't just let her go. There is still something wrong with her stomach, and Dad thinks it's the new feed we just put her on. So we gave her some mineral oil to coat the lining of her stomach hoping that will be like a band-aid until her stomach can heal. We put her in her pen and were finished for the night.
So back to the cake I go. The heifer episode probably took around an hour. When I came back in to work on the cake I had another message from the hubby asking about his food and to tell me they were headed back to the jail. Once again I told him I was still working on the cake and it would take a little longer than expected, i.e. he's gonna have to wait. So I pull out a bunch of bowls and piping bags and tips and food colors and my special tool for this new technique I used. Then I mixed and mixed until my arm hurt, but all of my colors were finished and bags were filled. This was the true fun part. On most of my cakes the part I love most is baking, but on this cake that was a totally different story.
I piped all my wonky shapes and went to town with my handy dandy............
ROLLER?????
Yep. I couldn't believe it either. I got one of these foam rollers from Walmart for three bucks and it worked like a charm.
After putting all of my colors on the cake it was bumpy and misshapen and kinda ugly. I gently rolled over the top of my crusted frosting and it all squished down and moved into place. Just like it was supposed to! That NEVER happens!!! It took a couple rolls for it to all really move into place and get really smooth like the picture. If I saw a crack that didn't get filled I just turned the edge of the roller down and quickly went over that certain spot a few times to smooth it out. Oh my gosh, this was the most fun I've ever had making a cake! Silly..yes I know, but it was awesome. I just couldn't stop. This is where another extra twenty minutes came in to the process because I was just playing with it.
Then I cut out a picture I had printed off the internet to use as a stencil for the logo. I piped my pink icing inside the stencil, smoothed with the roller (I tried not to get carried away here because I didn't want it to be deformed), and verrrry carefully pulled the stencil off. This made the edges pull up a little so they were kinda jagged, but I used my handy dandy roller's edge to gently smooth the edges down. Voila! a finished camo cupcake cake with a hot pink browning logo. I'm so proud of this sucker I have to put the picture up twice.
I took pictures and put it in a box. Ready to go! Now that it's three in the morning I can finally make that food hubby is hounding me for. I pack up some chili and cornbread and drive old Charlie (my sturdy old F150) up to the jail. When Benji finally got out to see me he was thoroughly agitated...understandably of course, he had a tough night and was starving. But I was agitated too. I didn't just make a cake.... I made truffles and dinner and cupcakes and icing and fixed a cow and iced the cake and made him some food and then drove thirty minutes to take it to him and now had to drive thirty minutes to go home. So I gave him his food, and kissed him then let him go back to work. I got home and put on my pjs, got in bed and........I can't sleep! Are you kidding me???? I am so tired that my body doesn't even want to walk all the way from the front door to my bedroom and now that I'm finally here.....ugh! I finally fell asleep around 4:35. Ah yes sweet sleep, how I've missed you so.
Yep. I couldn't believe it either. I got one of these foam rollers from Walmart for three bucks and it worked like a charm.
After putting all of my colors on the cake it was bumpy and misshapen and kinda ugly. I gently rolled over the top of my crusted frosting and it all squished down and moved into place. Just like it was supposed to! That NEVER happens!!! It took a couple rolls for it to all really move into place and get really smooth like the picture. If I saw a crack that didn't get filled I just turned the edge of the roller down and quickly went over that certain spot a few times to smooth it out. Oh my gosh, this was the most fun I've ever had making a cake! Silly..yes I know, but it was awesome. I just couldn't stop. This is where another extra twenty minutes came in to the process because I was just playing with it.
Then I cut out a picture I had printed off the internet to use as a stencil for the logo. I piped my pink icing inside the stencil, smoothed with the roller (I tried not to get carried away here because I didn't want it to be deformed), and verrrry carefully pulled the stencil off. This made the edges pull up a little so they were kinda jagged, but I used my handy dandy roller's edge to gently smooth the edges down. Voila! a finished camo cupcake cake with a hot pink browning logo. I'm so proud of this sucker I have to put the picture up twice.
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I took pictures and put it in a box. Ready to go! Now that it's three in the morning I can finally make that food hubby is hounding me for. I pack up some chili and cornbread and drive old Charlie (my sturdy old F150) up to the jail. When Benji finally got out to see me he was thoroughly agitated...understandably of course, he had a tough night and was starving. But I was agitated too. I didn't just make a cake.... I made truffles and dinner and cupcakes and icing and fixed a cow and iced the cake and made him some food and then drove thirty minutes to take it to him and now had to drive thirty minutes to go home. So I gave him his food, and kissed him then let him go back to work. I got home and put on my pjs, got in bed and........I can't sleep! Are you kidding me???? I am so tired that my body doesn't even want to walk all the way from the front door to my bedroom and now that I'm finally here.....ugh! I finally fell asleep around 4:35. Ah yes sweet sleep, how I've missed you so.
But wait! There's more! Hubby gets home at seven in the morning. Usually he comes home, puts on his pjs, we cuddle and he goes right to sleep. Except Mom came in and says the heifer has bloated again. Needless to say, everyone got dressed and went outside to fix her once more, but we didn't have Dad this time. He was at work. No problem, we don't need Dad...right? Well I am an Ag graduate and I've intubated a cow before, I've even intubated a horse before....but never a heifer which is quite a bit smaller. That's ok, it's the same concept...except those were both a few years ago and my hands weren't freezing or covered in mineral oil then. I tried my hardest to get that hose down her throat, but she just wasn't having it. Dad had already called in reinforcements though and they showed up not long after that with a different type of hose actually meant to go down her throat. So we moved her to the squeeze chute and tried to gett it down her, but in calf anatomy the windpipe and the esophagus are right next to each other. If it doesn't go down the right pipe we could potentially damage her windpipe and cause some serious damage. It took us a few tries but we finally got it where we wanted it. All of the air came out of her, we gave her some eggs (to add the necessary bacteria back into her stomach), and then some more mineral oil. I gave her an antibiotic shot, and she went back in her pen. She got a little better as the day went on, and we got her some different feed. Today she's back to normal and we haven't seen anymore issues with her, praise God! This is good because losing a $5,000 heifer is no bueno on the Diamond H Ranch!
Glad to report that today everyone was working, and the kids and I got to spend a lazy day in front of the fire watching movies. I did make some chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake truffles though! None of them have been eaten yet, but I'll let you all know in my next post.
Thanks for stopping by!
Love Lucy
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