Mission Accomplished

It is almost 11pm and I am done. All traces of food coloring have been cleaned. The trash has been taken out (for some reason when I went to the dumpster I was singing to myself "one, two Freddy's coming for you three four better lock your door") the dishes are done and the 'project' is wrapped in tin foil at the bottom of the fridge.

Here's what happened.

I was genuinely surprised at how easy it was to cut out the pieces.

The itself is much pinker than I wanted it to be but it's ok. I never took a painting class or had to do anything dealing with color so I figure all things considered I did alright.

The frosting process begins! This stuff was messy and gooey. I learned that applying frosting with a knife as opposed to a spatula is more efficient and less likely to cause the cake to tear.

Fly! Fly little raider! Fly!

Oooh check it out from the backside!

Well, I'm done and I'm exhausted. I'm going to sleep!

Out of the oven!!!

You know, this might not be as bad as I've spent the last half hour imagining it will be. I need to be more positive.

I made a sheet cake and then a small cake (above) for contouring. The color is much better than I thought it would be despite it's florescence. The scanner on the raider's face is kind of neon red anyway so I guess it works. I GUESS.

The food coloring problem has made me nervous about dyeing the frosting black but there's no escape. It must be done.

Minor disaster strikes

How long has it been? I've already encountered my first set back. I started mixing the red food coloring into the batter (why didn't you just get a red velvet cake? WELL for starters, vanilla tastes better and besides when do I have the opportunity to experiment with food coloring?) and it was a hot pink. So I added more red and it just got hotter and pinker. SOOOO I figured that I have black food coloring as well, might as well add a couple of drops in to darken things up.

Rules learned so far:

1. Do not free pour food coloring
2. Hot pink and black do not equal red

I'm glad I got two boxes of cake mix. I really don't know whether to scrap this batter and make a purple cake to bring to work (tomorrow is take your child to work day) or if I should just go with it.

...

...

...

I think I'm going to make the other box of cake.

Setting up

I'm not a very good baker. My cooking style is better suited to meals, things that let me use my intuition and taste instead of my ability to follow directions and precision.

Two years ago I attempted to bake a flourless chocolate cake for someone's birthday - it turned out miserably. By the time I realized what a failure it was he was on his way home and it was too late to run to the store for some mix or even a pre-made cake. I hoped that the flavor would save it. It didn't. I'm still amazed we didn't get sick from eating it. I've learned a lot since then.

This year I am attempting another ambitious project - a cake in the shape of a cylon raider. It's robot stuff. Action shot to your upper left.




These are my ingredients. White cake that will be dyed red - white frosting that will be dyed black, DOTS for the power nubs on the back, twizzlers for the scanner/eye, stella d'oro cookies for his body and a computer print out of the shape of the raider for me to use as a stencil. I know it's box cake and that's lame but after the flourlesss cake disaster of '06 TRUST ME it's better this way.

Let's do this!!