Mermaids Are Vicious, Evil Creatures.

'Ello Earthlings. Super long catch up post GO!

Okay soooo I just knocked a couple of really big things out. I posted a billion pictures on my babies birthday, but her party wasn’t until ten days after on August 26th. I’m broke. I had a budget of about $100 for the whole party. That was a fun ten days let me tell you. I only cut out maybe oh 300 construction paper fish… five cardboard stingrays and turtles, eight cardboard shark fins, a mermaid… well you know what let me just show you…

See, lots of cutting. Quite a few hours. Quite a few hours plus quite a few kids makes quite a few more hours. Yeah. Then there was the cake. My god the damned cake. This cake gave me HELL. It was such a disaster. Thinking about it makes me cringe. Have I mentioned that I’m a pastry chef? Because I am… was… am... before my daughter was born. Culinary school, restaurant experience, selling cakes from home, pastry chef. Well it has been about six years since I’ve really baked it up. I still know what I’m doing but my daughters fifth birthday cake that I was heavily invested in might not have been the best idea for my grand reintroduction.

I started with the white chocolate decorations, mermaid tails, sea shells, sea horses… just colored, molded and dusted with some gold. No big deal.

Really easy. It wasn’t true white chocolate so I didn’t have to temper which was nice (always go for the temper if you can though much better finished product). Fairly simple. My Dad’s wife who is the best baking helper ever made some home made fondant for me while I made the gelatin bubbles (All recipes bellow). Now I had bubbles dipped and fondant made so I did a couple of fondant decorations, basically things I no way couldn’t do with the chocolate. I made some branch coral with a mold. Pop it in pop it out. I made some sheet coral by cutting different sized rectangles and using both ends of various round piping tips to make it look like swiss cheese followed by scrunching the bottom and pinching, cut off excess and boom done. The seaweed I made with green fondant by just cutting it into different length strips and twisting, some I shaped and some I left straight. Oh and I cut a shell shape out of gumpaste. That day went well.

I started the mermaid a couple of days later and this is where things went screwy. She started off alright but as I kept working with her she just… well she wasn’t cooperating. Her tail kept breaking for one, and I didn’t think I had enough time to sculpt a proper face so I tried a thing where I molded a head and added features then put another thin layer of gumpaste on it and well it was mess and a half. She was making me more and more angry and it was two in the morning. I gave up. I put my stuff away and went to bed. The next day I spent the whole day working on her… just getting angrier and angrier. Finally Rose yelled at me that she loved the mermaid Mommy made and to stop touching it. So I did. Went back in the kitchen a bit later and yeeeeah she fell. See progression pictures.

I won’t put toys on my cakes. Never. Nope. Will not do it. Then it hit me… the aha moment… the ‘why am I such a dumbass?’ moment. IT’S THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING AUGUST! Its hot, its humid, its sticky, its baking 101. Nothing will ever turn out quite how you want it to in these conditions, humidity is the sugar paste killa. I’d never made a cake in a not temperature controlled environment before, it was something I knew but had never really had to think about. Add in a six year hiatus and you get a shitty mermaid. Deep sigh of relief, okay, I don’t suck I’m just stupid. Unfortunately I just didn’t have the time to cool the house and try again so I already didn’t have a mermaid.

Well then I had to get the rest of what I needed and go to my Dad’s for the weekend to finish up everything. My Dad’s Wife picked me up at 6pm on Friday and we went to the grocery store with littlest sis tagging along being a great list checker for me. We were both already pretty shot at this time, having a lot of special, special moments. Her big special, special was when she tried to put the cart back in the other carts with groceries still in it. We’ll get to mine. So we go to her house and begin. Got the strawberry cakes baked (they were SO pretty and tasted like strawberry candy on their own), got the cheesecake mixed and in the oven of their three hour process, and started on the whipped cream/cream cheese frosting.

So I get that going. The bowl was nice and clean and chilled, the cream cheese was beat to hell, the heavy whipping cream was chilled. Ready for my special, special? I pour the cream in and get it started and I’m standing there watching it and Dad’s Wife asks…
“Do you want the whisk?”
“For what?”
“For.. the… cream?”
“Why?”
“For… the… cream?”
“OHMYGAWD!”

I was beating the whipped cream. With a paddle attachment. I turned off my mixer and put my forehead on the counter half laughing maybe half trying not to cry because I just did that. If you didn’t know, if you want to whip cream… you have to whip it… with a whisk, there’s really no getting around that. So I composed myself and switched attachments. It whipped up to a low medium peak just fine… but then… well I mentioned I was shot right? I combined them and this happened.

With nowhere to go it just… deflated. I never took my eyes off of it and there was no grain or separation so I didn’t over whip it just got sad and I wound up with cream cheese soup. Can’t frost a cake with cream cheese soup. Dad’s wife went to bed and I stayed up to pull out the cheesecakes and try to idk, salvage something. I didn’t have time to do the decoration I wanted to, it was a bit complex and would have needed a full dry time, so I tried at the mermaid again starting with her head. I got a good base (yes it’s supposed to look like that) but by the time I had that sculpted my head was pounding, my back sore, and my eyes trying desperately to close without my consent. Again I said “Fuck this mermaid” and went to bed. In between all of this we were painting cardboard, making suspended fish jello cups, chocolate dipping a decorating pretzels, ext.

Saturday morning I came down, got me a cup of coffee and jumped back in. While My Dad ran to the store to get me some more heavy whipping cream I planned layout and (using leftover strawberry puree from the cake recipe) brushed the cakes to make sure they had enough moisture. He got back and I tired a usual fix, mixing in some unwhipped heavy cream to bring it back. It seemed like it was kind of working but… Nope. I used it very thinly between the layers though to kind of glue them. Fine. Plan C. Gelatin stabilized whipped cream. Basic recipe, I’ve done it before. Prepared my geletian got the whipped cream to a soft peak, added some whipped cream to the galatian to regulate the temperature added it in got stiff peaks, beautiful!

With a heavy sigh I began to frost my cakes. It was then that I noticed the globs of geletian boogers. I covered the cake anyway because, air bad, and tried to kind of sculpt waves. I then explained to Dad’s Wife that gelatin boogers mean it’s not stabilized and there was no way in hell that it would hold decoration. I was supposed to have the cake finished at this point, but I’d spent so much time trying to fix the frosting that… well… I hardly had a cake at all.

At this point I was ready to fall to my knees crying that I’m a failure, please end the misery. We decided it was a good time to take a break, so we went out to the barn where her horse Ollie and my sisters horse Cash live to do her weekly barn chores. While she mucked stalls I filled outside water which, takes about an hour for five barrels. Most of that time I was really snuggling with Ollie and Cash, which was AMAZING because it was the first time they were really snuggly with me. They’ve always been nice enough but this time they were giving me horsie hugs and rubbing me with their faces and following me and just being super sweet.

We got back to the house around 8pm, blew the barn dust out of our noses and sat down in our pjs. “What are you going to do?” She knew better than to ask if I was going to give up, my moments of self pity and misery never really last very long before I remember that I’m a badass. We went to the grocery store yet again. I decided that I was not going to stay up all night trying to do this and went to bed.

Sunday morning I made the frosting, frosted the cake. Rai came and helped me by rolling fondant and cutting it into circles so that I could literally just throw scales on the cake, she also brought the turtle melon and banana dolphins and brought balloons for the mailbox. Called @Chey to yell at him because I said 9:30, meant 10:30 and he was STILL late at 11, he and @howellogic showed up to help set up tents, decorations, and walk the plank (randomly shouting to me in the kitchen that I was crazy), you know all of that. I was being crazy, my back was riddled with tension knots and I thought I might implode but it got done and at 1 pm we had her party. She LOVED her party. Let me just say, I LOVE my people. I absolutely could not have done it without them, they even stayed to help me clean up. By 6 pm it looked like we’d never even been there.

I went out for the night, and got home Monday at 7am. I was wrecked so I spent most of the day unboxing and putting away Rose’s birthday stuff. Tuesday my sister and BIL have off so I took that day to not do much too. Wednesday I went out for my friends son’s birthday party and was out most of the day. Thursday and Friday I tried to do some catch up on the house, went to chant with some Buddhists, and Saturday spent some quality much needed time with my purple minions. Sunday we got last minute school stuff made returns yada yada, Monday was back to school prep day. Same as Sunday plus checking backpacks, laying out clothes, packing lunches, ext. Today I woke up at 6 am, made some monkey pancakes before the girls woke up at 7, started getting them ready, boys woke up at 7:30, did the girls hair while the boys ate. They were all set and ready to go at 8pm. Nana and Daddy came then for pre-first day of school photo shoot and to send her off on the bus.

We followed her to the school of course, saw her classroom and said our bye byes. I got home about 9:30 and after unwinding for a bit I looked up and straight did not have a clue what to do with myself. I could go jogging? Damn now I don’t have an excuse not to go jogging I could clean? First kid free day I could write, read, draw? I think I’ll take a nap. Totally took a nap. Woke up, got some basic cleaning done, got the kids off of the bus, snack, half an hour of reading, dinner, play outside and we’re about to send them to bed.

Basically August has been NUTS and I’m a big adorable ball of stress and a slight bit of aggression, but its over. We’re back to our normal schedule where we have Four and Seven Monday night-Tuesday night, and every other weekend. We have every other weekend with NO KIDS, because even though Ex is leaving state next week (did I mention that one of those days in there was heavily spent consoling my baby because her Daddy is leaving state? No? Well that happened. Its for the best but she’s still upset of course) Nana is awesome and will still be taking her. I’ll be getting them on the bus at 8:30 daily, and have time to catch up on house and life and all until I find a day job I want until they get home at 3:30 and all of the craziness and stress will dissipate into a nice, normal routine. Hopefully.

There go my babies. I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Wooosaaaa.

This month did remind me of something though, something super important.

I fucking love making cakes.

And ya know what? I have two orders for October and one for November, I was going to to a just for fun one in November too but right now I’m not sure. We’ll see.

Recipes.

^{INGREDIENTS
VANILLA CHEESECAKE
48 oz (678g) cream cheese, room temperature
2 cup (207g) sugar
6 tbsp (24g) all purpose flour
2 cup (230g) sour cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract
8 large eggs, room temperature
STRAWBERRY CAKE LAYERS
1 1/2 cup (168g) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups (310g) sugar
1 1/2 cup (173g) sour cream
1 tbsp strawberry flavoring
12 large egg whites, room temperature
5 cups (325g) all purpose flour
8 tsp (18g) baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup (120ml) milk
1 cup (120ml) strawberry puree
pink food color
CREAM CHEESE WHIPPED CREAM FROSTING
32oz (452g) cream cheese, room temperature
6 cups (720ml) heavy whipping cream, cold
2 1/2 cups (144g) powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
INSTRUCTIONS}

Cake

^{Preheat the oven to 350°F (176°C). Line the bottoms of two 10-inch and two 6-inch cake pans with parchment paper and grease the sides.
In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light in color and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.
Add the sour cream and strawberry extract and mix until combined.
Add the egg whites in two batches, mixing until well combined after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to make sure everything is combined.
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Combine the milk and strawberry puree in a measuring cup.
Add half of the flour mixture to the batter and mix until combined.
Add the milk mixture to the batter and mix until combined.
Add the remaining flour mixture and mix until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to ensure everything is being combined. Stir in the food coloring.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans. Bake for 27-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with a few crumbs.
Remove the cakes from the oven and allow to cool for 2-3 minutes, then remove from pans to a cooling rack to finish cooling.}

Cheesecake

^{Lower oven temp to 300°F (148°C). Line the entire inside of one 10-inch and one 6-inch cake pan with aluminum foil. Press it into the pan to get it as flat as you can. You’ll use the aluminum foil to lift the cheesecake out of the pan when it’s baked and cooled.
In a large mixer bowl, mix the cream cheese, sugar and flour together until combined. Use low speed to keep less air from getting into the batter, which can cause cracks. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the sour cream, and vanilla extract and mix on low speed until well combined.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing slowly and scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition.
Pour the cheesecake batter into the lined cake pan.
Place the cake pan inside another larger pan. I use a larger cake pan, but you can use a roasting pan or any other larger baking pan. Fill the outside pan with enough warm water to go about halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake for 1 hour.
Turn off the oven and leave the cheesecake in the oven with the door closed for 30 minutes. Do not open the door or you’ll release the heat.
Crack oven door and leave the cheesecake in the oven for another 30 minutes. This cooling process helps the cheesecake cool slowly to prevent cracks.
Remove cheesecake from oven and chill until firm, 5-6 hours.}

Whipped cream cheese frosting

^{Add the cream cheese to a large mixer bowl and beat until smooth, then set aside.
Add the heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar and vanilla extract to another bowl and whip until soft peaks form.
Add the cream cheese to the whipped cream and whip until stiff peaks form. It will happen fairly quickly. Set whipped frosting in the refrigerator.}

Build

^{Use a large serrated knife to remove the domes from the top of the cakes.
Place the first layer of cake on a serving plate or a cardboard cake round. Spread brush extra puree and thin layer of frosting over one of each cake round.
Use the aluminum foil to lift the cheesecake out of the cake pan, remove the foil and place the cheesecake on top of the cake.
Spread puree and thing layer of frosting evenly on bottoms of the ther two cake rounds, then flip onto the cheesecake. If the sides of the cake don’t line up, use a serrated knife to trim off the excess cake or cheesecake.
Add dowels or wooden skewers if necessary (I did)
Frost the outside of the cake.
Store the cake (in an airtight container, if possible) in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Cake is best for 2-3 days.
Found and modified from Life, Love, and Sugar}

Marshmallow Fondant

^{I used the recipe from Wilton’s website here}

Gelatin bubbles

^{I used this article from Sugar Hero as reference, my one suggestion is do not be afraid if it looks too thin. The thinner ones came out best, as long as the balloon is covered you’re good. Also make a few more than what you’ll need because some of my balloons deflates on their own over time giving me a couple of stumpy misshapen bubbles.}

All images are my own.