Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A Break From Cakes, and Yet More Cakes!

My surgery was scheduled for March 27th, but as luck would have it (as it usually does) the doctor called me up on March 24th and said why not tomorrow? Go figure. I panicked, I flipped, I did all the things you would expect a paranoid over the top person to do. Finally, I accepted the inevitable. The funny thing was, my biggest concern was that I wasn't going to finish my cake. You heard me, I wasn't worried about the surgery or the life vs. death or any of that--that would come later, trust me--for the moment all I could think about was my cake--my LAST cake, at least for now. See, the last day of our Fondant and Gum Paste class was the day after my scheduled surgery. Since there was little chance I could make it, I had talked to Katherine (the instructor) earlier and she said I could make the final project beforehand and send pictures with my mom and Carolyn. I had planned to finish it by Thursday, and all the sudden Tuesday night was here and my cake HAD to be done! It may seem like a silly thing, but this was a huge deal to me. Fortunately I am blessed with an angel mother who helped me through the surgery pre-opt and after dinner we sat down and worked on decorating my cake; however silly it may have seemed on the surface, she could see how important it was to me. After all, this would be my last cake for quite some time! It had to be a good one.

Well, to make a long story short, we did finish the cake in time, even in time to get to bed at a half-decent hour for my 5:30am surgery call time. The result: a beautiful piano-themed cake, dedicated to Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum for their excellence and endurance through the torturous program of AIM (Achievement In Music). I almost didn't want to let them eat it, I was so proud, but I had little say in the matter, seeing that in a few hours I would be spilling my guts out on an operating table. I did get to eat some of the chocolate fondant though--mmMMMMMmm--it was like rocky road fudge! It was a pain in the butt to work with, but the taste was definitely worth it. So enough of my jabbering, here's the finished product:


By the way, I made the chocolate fondant just like the normal marshmallow fondant found on Katherine's site, except I added 1.5-2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips. In retrospect, I think adding some karo syrup would have really helped, because it tended to crack quickly and needed to be reheated much to often. Other than that though, it tasted wonderful.

And I know this is just making this post that much longer, and it's on another blog, but I can't help it--Here are a few pictures of Carolyn's and Mom's cakes, which I have to post again because they are just that beautiful--oooh, and they get bonus points for Springiness!:

2 comments:

Kar said...

Oh. My. Gosh. I need to sign up for this class. They are beautiful!

Get well soon, I want you back.

Kaitlin Heckert said...

I love LOve LOVE it!!! Please oh please will you teach me everything you know!? Sometime when I am back in Utah I want to play with you and we can make cakes galore!! Right? PLEASE!?