Friday, June 17, 2011

Diving in head first



Vail, Colorado


Alright, here it is, my first post since coming back to Colorado from NYC. I have to say it's nice to be back. I love NYC and always will, but there's really no place like home and I'm glad to be staying with my dad for the summer.


My first week back was a busy one, starting with my cousin Kate's 3rd birthday. I went up to Vail for the weekend as a lot of my family was in town for this event. Kate's mom, my cousin Andrea (who also happens to be one of my very best friends) asked me if I would help her make the birthday cake. Kate is obsessed with The Little Mermaid, she's definitely a girl after my own heart. While Andrea said she wanted something pretty simple, I was still a little nervous about making the cake. I feel like people have very high expectations for me now that I've gone to culinary school. The thing they sometimes don't realize, however, is that a great deal of time and preparation goes into creating the gorgeous cakes you see in the bakery display cases. She wanted to make the cakes the afternoon before the party, which made me a little nervous, but it was her daughter's birthday so I went with it.

It. was. a. disaster.


I forgot about the perils of high altitude baking, and that, along with an oven door that didn't close properly, resulted in a giant cake flop. I don't have pictures for you, but let me paint you a picture. We dubbed it P.O.S. cake, otherwise known as 'pile o' sh*t" cake, because that is exactly what it looked like. Fortunately the addition of more flour, a slightly lower baking temp. and a locked oven door resulted in this :




Not my all time best work, but considering I started decoration at 10 o'clock that night and worked until 1 a.m., not so bad. Most important of all Kate loved her cake. So much so that I caught her hugging it. It was so adorable I really couldn't begrudge her smooshing the shell border I had meticulously piped the night before. Ahh, the things you do for family.

The birthday girl in all her glory:






Andrea, Kate (when she was just a peanut) and myself




I made cupcakes too, just in case someone wanted to take some cake home *ahem* that would be me



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