Monday, November 15, 2010

Life List: Get paid to decorate a cake

As of 1:30p last Friday I am an official cake baker for hire.  B's coworker saw the remnants of various cakes I've sent with him to work over the last year - so they don't stay here for me to eat - and liked the idea of supporting a local woman instead of a grocery store.  Rock on, Kathleen, thank you!

Kathleen's son Connor was turning 6 and wanted a Pokemon cake.  The instructions were: a sheet cake, big enough to feed 30 people, a Pokemon/Pikachu theme, and room for characters to place on the cake.

The sheet cake shape was actually more challenging than the unknown theme.  It's harder to decorate and frost a big flat surface than the stacked cakes I usually make.  But thanks to the glorious internet, I was finally able to figure out something that I liked.

The ball on top is a separate cake and is the Pokemon "poke ball." I didn't dive far enough into Pokemon lore to find out exactly what said ball does, but it seemed to be a big deal.  The lightning bolts are for Connor's favorite character Pikachu.  Pikachu throws lightning bolts, which, incidentally, seems like a really effective little power to have.  Note to self.

The name is the actual Pokemon font, printed out, traced, and cut out from fondant.  And the lightning bolts were rigged to some wire.  Many thanks to the engineer husband who figured out a way to attach the bolts to the wire when the first method didn't work.  Let's just say that wire and food weren't meant to stick together.

The inside of the cake was dyed fluorescent yellow to match the lightning bolts, which never photographed quite as bright as they were in real life.  And the little characters - which she had at her house - were going to be placed around the poke ball.

All in all, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  The $40 I received for the cake allowed me to buy some supplies at the baking supply store.  Not to mention that it was really satisfying to challenge myself with a new theme, do the hard work, and then get to ship the cake off and out of my house. Although I will say that I never stop being amazing at how much work goes into producing such a very simple looking cake.

I'm hoping that there were enough satisfied mothers at the party that I get to do a few more of these over the next year. I'll keep you posted.








3 comments:

feather nester said...

Yay! Congrats for getting paid for doing something creative that you enjoy! That's awesome. Be sure to share more pics if she gives you any with the characters on it, all assembled. It looks awesome as is, though! I'm sure the birthday boy LOVED it!

And I know exactly what you mean about even simple-looking things taking so much more work and/or time than you'd imagine. I'm glittering some letters for a Thanksgiving decoration right now. Sounds so simple, right? Glue and glitter, like we did in kindergarten. But letters have all these nooks and crannies...and glitter gets everywhere...and they're 3-D of course, so I can't get all the surfaces in one go, not even close. So it's turned into a multi-day project. They're REALLY pretty, though!

Strongmama said...

Congrats to you! Great job! Hope you get some more business. I'd totally employ you for a certain
5th birthday party in February, which I am told, might have to have a drumset with high hat cymbals. Dear me, I hope he changes his mind to something like a soccer ball before that!

die Frau said...

Very impressive! Buddy the Cake Boss has NOTHING on you. Seriously, that's awesome.

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