In Pictures: Birthday Party, Part I

We're preparing for Kaitlyn's birthday party this week and we're t-minus two days from the festivities. While Michelle is running around like a chicken with her head cut off organizing per usual, I am taking this opportunity to make up for my lack of initiative over the last eight-plus months of semi-retirement.

I am making her cake.

And we're not talking about some run-of-the-mill cake here, either. I had the bright notion a few weeks ago that I would pull a Duff and trick out this birthday cake. You see, we had a little snafu with last year's cake (purchased) and I wanted to make sure that this year's cake would do us proud. Plus, I'm pretty anal-retentive creative, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

This year, Michelle decided on a Crayola-themed party. You may recall the trip to New Jersey and the Crayola Factory late last year, which Kaitlyn loved. So wouldn't be friggin' sweet if we had a big-old box of Crayola crayons as the cake? Heck yeah it would.

I found some ideas online. Some people are really creative. Some people have too much time on their hands are great artists. Some people really need to take a class have big hearts. I wanted to take it a step further -- fondant.

Anybody can ice a cake with some out-of-the-can Betty Crocker. But wouldn't it be friggin' sweet to build a cake, making the homemade butter cream icing and fondant to give it that Ace of Cakes feel? Heck yeah it would.

So I found a great recipe and ran with it. It's a messy proposition, from start to finish. And not just the fondant. The whole cake building process is pretty intense. It is ... well, just take a look for yourself:

The remnants of my cake-shaving experiment, part one. And that's homemade fondant. I would have taken a picture of the fondant-making process, but then the camera would just be one big lump of marshmallow.

The cake-building process is getting into its nitty-gritty stages. More remnants. And by the way -- I made a great tasting cake, if I do say so myself

Yeah, I know you're impressed with my fondant color mixing skills

Yeah, a covered cake. Hells yeah. And that recipe makes a helluva lot of fondant, so if you're planning to use the recipe, I would highly suggest making only one batch. And by the way: If anyone's looking for some extra fondant, just give me a call. 

Yeah, this is AFTER the first clean-up session. Told you it was intense. 

So you're going to have to wait another couple days to see the finished product, since I'm still working on it. Plus, I want the returning visitor pageviews to pump up my analytics.