I dreamed a dream in time gone by...

Yesterday was the culmination of a 20+ year dream. It is what Oprah would have called a “Full circle moment”. I, along with my husband had the incredible privilege of seeing Les Miserables on Broadway. My love affair began as a 12 year old girl in Mr. Noyce’s 7th grade girl’s choir class. He introduced us to as many musicals as was humanly possible in a school year, and the first time I heard Castle on a cloud, I was overcome with emotion. I knew that come hell or high water I would see the musical some day. I read the Novel, and watched the movies made about the story, and regularly tortured my husband and children with the music and story behind it. Each time it came to a city near me there was always some conflict that prevented me from seeing it. I was devastated when it stopped touring, and was sure I had missed my chance at seeing it.

Fast forward to late January, when I received an email letting me know that for one month it was coming to my area, starting February 1st! I called my husband, who was scheduled for a tonsillectomy for February 16th and told him we were going, and that I would try to get tickets for shows happening before the 16th. Since I work from home and have young children, weekdays were out, so it left Sundays and the Saturday after my husband’s surgery. He thought he would be feeling 100% a few days after surgery, so he said any time was ok. When I looked online for tickets, I was stunned to find that nearly every single performance was completely sold out! Then I found out that tickets had gone on sale the previous November, so it would be a miracle if I found any tickets. After a few hours on the internet, I was finally able to score probably the last 2 tickets to the last show on the last day of the performance. Yes they were a bit more than the $35 I paid to see Phantom, and the $25 I paid to see Wicked, but when you are talking about a life long dream, price is not a consideration. Plus it fell smack dab between Valentines day and our 14th wedding Anniversary, so in that regard we saved money.

We were excited for our impending date, and planned to take the train into the city. I looked online for train schedules only to find out that our closest train was out of commission due to a derailment a few days before, and the next closest station only ran trains every two hours, which meant that we would be gone 4 extra hours from the kids. So my husband agreed to drive us down. Saturday, my teen babysitter, informed me, after a scuffle with his brother that he would not be watching his brothers the next day, and that I had better find other care for them. Being that we can’t find anyone willing to watch 4 boys even with a months notice, I knew I would never find someone to watch them with less than 24 hrs. notice. After a few tear, and a little guilt trip I resorted to bribing him, and he agreed once again to watch his siblings. Then that night , My husband called me on his way home from work and told me that his first day back at work had made his throat hurt again, and he just didn’t know if he was up to driving down and then having to walk to the theater. He suggested that I call a friend. The first friend who sprang to mind loves musicals as much as I do, so I called, no answer, I called again an hour later, still no answer. I tried her husband’s cell, her Facebook page, you name it, I tried it. I finally left her messages every place I could think of and crossed my fingers. I still hadn’t heard from her by the next morning, so I told my husband he was stuck taking me (he was feeling a bit better). That was right about the time he started spitting up blood. Yes you read that right. My husband told me that I would have to take the train down by myself or take my oldest son with me (I don’t drive to the city, it freaks me out) and this was 30 minutes before I would have to leave to catch the last possible train and still get there on time. This will make me seem horrible, but oh well when dreams are on the line sometimes you have to be ruthless. I called my husbands Dr. and made my husband tell him what was going on, he said if it stopped in 30 minutes or less he was fine, if it continued a trip to the E.R was in order. He told my hubby to gargle with ice water and eat a Popsicle. I made sure he followed through. Thank goodness it was no big deal, the bleeding stopped and he was fine after the first initial scare. Apparently 11-12 days postop a little bleeding is normal. So after all of that I developed nervous diarrhea. I really thought the Universe was out to get me, but with a little Immodium I was good as new.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, we drove down, dealt with very little traffic, parked the car, found a place to eat, then went to the performance of a lifetime. It was so amazing, I laughed, and cried, and drank in the gorgeous art deco of the theater, and the brilliant performance. It was an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life. As we were walking back to our car my husband asked me if it was everything I had dreamed of. I told him that it was so much more; it was the culmination of years of dreaming, and that this girl with not much money to her name, could still find moments of great joy in life and that dreams really can come true.

Sweet rewards

                                  The finished cake

I just sold my very first cake that I baked, leveled, frosted and decorated with my own two hands! Now I have made many, many cakes for other people and leveled, and frosted, and decorated them, but this was the first time someone has actually offered to pay me to do it. My friend had seen some pictures of previous cakes I had made on my Facebook page, and asked me if I would be willing to make one for her sister-in-law’s baby shower, I of course panicked and let her know that I have as yet still not completed course 3 of the Wilton method, and was a novice at best, she said not to worry that she was looking for something simple. She gave me a picture of a jungle themed paper plate, and said she wanted those colors, that buttercream animals were ok, but she would prefer fondant, and let me do my thing.

                The plate that inspired it all.

I was immediately inspired, and decided that the only way to do her cake justice was to learn how to make fondant animals. So I looked through my decorating books, and since I am a visual learner, they were of absolutely no help. So I turned to the next best thing; YouTube! Seriously there are so many videos on how to make fondant animals. And many of them give bad information, like they made their animals in one piece which looks fantastic if the fondant is still wet but when it dries it cracks like my skin in cold weather. So through trial and error, and one whole block of wasted fondant, I mastered a jungle animal or four.

I started with the lion, since that was the only criteria my friend had. I figured at the very least she would have one animal. I only had to make him twice to get it right. Apparently fondant works best if it is left to dry overnight before assembling the body parts. When he was dry and together, I used tinted buttercream to pipe a mane around his head.

                                                                                         Mr Lion

Next came the giraffe, I at first made his neck and body separately, and his feet as four separate pieces. But when I put him together, (again the 24 hour rule here would have been good to know) he was too soft and ripped and cracked all over. So I decided to remake him and make his head and torso one piece, and was able to use the original legs. He looked great. When he had dried for 2 days I piped chocolate buttercream on his head and back for hair.

                                          

        Mr's Giraffe and Elephant respectively

My friend never mentioned an elephant, but the color of blue she had chosen for the polka dots, was begging to be made into an elephant. Again, it only took me two tries to figure out the best way to make him sturdy.

     Nothing nice to say about this cheeky little devil

                   

Then it was time to make the monkey. First let me say that to save money I had only purchased white fondant because it is a fraction of the cost of tinted fondant, and I just had to buy gel color. So when I got to my 4th animal and started the tinting process, it became apparent to me that there is a reason you pay a pretty penny for tinted fondant. Some colors take forever to tint, and use a ton of gel color. Brown is one of those colors; it took half a bottle to tint enough fondant for two monkeys. When I was done the texture of the fondant was different, stickier, harder to shape and smooth, and much more brittle when dry. But since it takes nearly 2 full days for the fondant to really dry I wouldn’t figure it out right away. ::Sigh:: so after making 3 failed monkeys, I decided to use gum paste instead of fondant to make my monkey. I was slightly more successful and with some smoke and mirrors got him to look cute enough to sit on the cake (as long as no one breathes, or looks at him funny that is.)

     Pretty good view of the palm trees

On the paper plate that my friend had shown me, there were two palm trees. Now when I originally thought the cake would be 2-D, I had dozens of ideas on how to execute the making of a tree. But when I decided to take the cake 3-D they became a bit more challenging. I decided to use Pepperidge farm pirouettes as the trunks of my trees and fondant in 2 colors for the leaves. I cot out the leaf shape with my fall leaf cookie cutter, then put them on my wave flower former upside down to get a good curve in them. When they were dry I used green butter cream to secure the pirouettes to the leaves, then left them to dry overnight.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this I realized that my friend had requested white cake, and since I had never baked a successful white cake from scratch before, I knew I was up for a challenge. I tried a few recipes from the internet, and then had my family and my friend’s family taste test them for me. The simplest cake won for flavor and texture, much to my relief. When I figured out how much to expand the recipe I discovered that one sheet cake would take 12 egg whites, 1 ½ C butter, and 1 ½ C sour cream!

The frosting of the cake is always where the panic sets in for me, it is a point of no return, and a place where in the past my cakes have fallen apart, or been very crumby and gotten into the frosting, but because I had frozen the cake, and the amount of moisture in the cake, it stayed frozen and hardened the frosting which made frosting and smoothing it a breeze. Because of the density of the cake it held up beautifully under the weight of the frosting and fondant.

   I tried to make the lettering look like jungle vines, and added little leaves.

I am stunned at how quickly this is snowballing into a business. My friend is giving out my number at her party, and even my Dr. Wants to hire me. This is a dream come true, and I am so grateful that I can make something that people actually want to buy. I am stunned at how much people are willing to pay for a cute cake. I had been putting off taking course three from Wiltons because of scheduling conflicts, but plan to take it soon. The course subject  is fondant and gumpaste.