Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Big news! Taciturn Tuesday is going all cake, all the time!

Ok...maybe not all the time- but at least for the next three Tuesdays, I'll be sharing my past Adventures in Cake Decorating with you.

One day in Burkina Faso, I was seized by a sudden urge to make fancy cakes. My first effort was a 3-D train for Severin's third birthday. Mercifully, there is no surviving picture of it.
With that failure under my belt, I was ready to move on (and up, so I hoped). I borrowed a cake pan from a crafty US expat neighbor and managed to make this for Alexa's birthday:
(I made Mallory a Teletubby cake that year. No good pic, sorry.)

Tya's best friend needed a cake soon after. I felt brave and drew this pony for her- no fancy pan or any instructions. Just me and the icing.
This next one is one from 2001. The kids at the party thought it was a bit alarming. It's definitely one of the scarier cakes ever made in Burkina, I'm thinking. It's not an original design, though- I got the idea out of a cake decorating magazine. It was baked in a teddy-bear cake pan. Looking back, I maybe just should have made a teddy bear...



When Valentine was deep into her Harry Potter phase, I made her this Hedwig cake. It's my own design and I think it turned out pretty spiffy.
After a while, I had enough experience that I felt ready to venture into more complicated projects. I made a character cake, without using a custom pan or accessories. I grabbed the video box, took a long look at Buzz Lightyear and started drawing in icing.
Next Tuesday, stop by to see SpongeBob, Pikachu and many more cartoon characters, entirely made out of sugar. Maybe that doesn't sound too exciting, but it's better than the alternative.
Remember, you can only choose one.

6 comments:

oreneta said...

I have never heard of Eddie Izzard before and I am forever in your debt for telling me about him. OMG....hahahahahahahahaha

Joy said...

Those are some lovely cakes, Beth! Buzz and Hedwig are my favourites, although the ferocious dinosaur is awesome, and Pooh is charming. ;)

I, too, very much enjoy making and decorating cakes for my family. And today, oddly enough, Margo and I have been searching through four different stores in two different communities, looking for ground cloves or allspice, and molasses to make Lloyd a spice cake for his birthday today, without luck! I am afraid he will get a cinnamon/vanilla alternative, with the raisin sauce as icing. :D

Beth said...

Rocky-Isn't he sheer brilliance? Have you been looking at his other stuff on YouTube? His riff on Star Trek is priceless, as is the "Star Wars Cantina" bit. But everything is great- don't miss any of it...

Joy- Thanks so much! And I SO sympathise with your shopping woes. It can be VERY hard to find familiar ingedients here. I've never seen molasses in France, ever. No corn syrup, either.

Momma Bee said...

I knew the Izzard quote but not the piece. Excellent! Thank you for celebrating Daisy's 3rd birthday with such beautiful cakes!

Susan PD said...

A blog called "Cake Wrecks" is receiving quite a bit of press here in the U.S. --you might want to check it out if need to submit some colossal failures. I'm not much of a decorator myself and my kids LOVE ice cream cakes...so my husband went to Carvel recently and ordered a cake saying the writing should read " 'Hana" and below it "'5 years'" ....and the cake read "Hana...Blow it...5 years"

We totally cracked up!

Beth said...

'Cake Wrecks' is amazing and I am addicted!! Thank you SO much for giving me a heads up about this hilarious, cake-oriented blog. Everybody should go have a look, srsly!