This cake is for a friend of mine who is recieving an award for cooking.  I was asked to make a cake for the party to celebrate and told “It’s rustic.  Do whatever you want.”  Those are beautiful words, I love ‘em!  Triple chocolate cake inside the cheese wheels, the rest is fondant and gum paste veggies and fruits.  My favorite are the radishes, which I should have had Janet come and photograph.  But alas, here’s the best I could do. 

For my nephew Jaidon, who is precious and may become my favorite family cake recipient if he follows through in the coming years with flavors like this one.  The boy is four and insisted on blueberry.  Oh the joy of not hearing “oh, just vanilla” or ”plain chocolate will be fine.”  Blueberry studded buttermilk country cake with cream cheese buttercream and blackberry swirled cream cheese buttercream between.  That’s a boy after my own heart.  The head and foot boards are gingerbread.  And, yes, that’s a big cheat with actual toys on the bed.  But the boy needs more toys, I’m tellin’ ya . . . 

Sorry for the terrible picture quality, I left my camera on my desk at work so these were taken with my phone. 

Vanilla cake with cookies & cream filling swirled with chocolate ganach and buttercream frosting.  For my nephew’s baseball team.  Three of the things I had to write on this cake pained me.  1)  Dirty Birds . . . *sigh*  Really?  2) J-Wad, yes I get the A-Rod similarity and it is just a straightforward break down of his actual name.  But oh, man.  3) I’ll let you guess the third . . .   

Strawberry cake, fresh strawberry buttercream and fresh strawberry filling.  I love summer. 

And is it just me?  Or is Ariel a little bit . . .  tarty? 

Last night Puppy was standing by the dining room window, softly rocking from left foot to right, talking to himself quietly.  Every now and then he would punctuate a point he was making to himself by lifting on tiny finger towards the ceiling, his fist curled into a gentle “O”.  Then slowly lower his hand back to his side.  Straight arms.  Softly closed fists.  Occasionally I would call out to him from the kitchen or living room.  Ask him a question.  Engage him for the sake of engaging.  He would respond, then turn his head back to the window.  And there he would continue his murmuring speech to himself.  These days he never stops talking.  Talking talking talking.  It is a constant hum in the background of our lives.  Sometimes rushing into the foreground as he becomes excited over something and chooses to share it with me.  It reminds me of the hum of an oscillating fan that’s out of whack.  The drone of the fan as it sits staring to the right is steady, soft, not something of which you are truly aware unless you consciously tune into it.  Then there will be a little tick or pop and the fan will swing your way.  You’ll get a rush of air as it swings by you.  A moment of relief as it lifts your hair from the back of your neck.  And then it makes a soft little thud as it settles into its position staring to the left for awhile.  Do you remember those days when you were a kid, when it was so hot you couldn’t sleep?  That heavy sticky feeling where your arms are made of lead, the sheets were too weighty to stand them lying over your legs and not even the cool side of the pillow can soothe you to sleep.  When all you can do is find that spot, the coolest spot you can, and wait for relief.  That is how I’ve been feeling lately.  Strung out and exhausted, the way you do on a day so hot that the air conditioner cannot keep up.  Not unhappy.  Just exhausted.  Exactly like a night after a long summer day when you were ten. 

Puppy hasn’t been sleeping almost at all lately.  Some nights he is awake until 5 a.m.  I tuck him into bed at eight.  And when I go back at ten to check, he’s still wide eyed.  So I settle him in with me, to keep my eye on him and make sure his wide eyed alertness doesn’t turn into wandering full out.  He lays in the bed beside me talking in whispers to himself.  He is planning.  Some immense new wonder of the world is being crafted inside there.  I wonder what it is that he is constantly building.  If you watch carefully, you can see him stop, reverse, and change a part of his plan.  And no amount of pleading, or redirecting or scolding can pull him out of his plans and force him into sleep.  He will sometimes pull me from my half sleep to ask me cryptic questions.  Like, “Mommy, how much is 123, 455 plus 12.”  Is this some quantity of concrete he will need for his colosseum’s columns?  The number of bricks he will need for a section of his great wall?  Or is he simply stringing together numbers in some endless equation in his mind?  My tiny little Sheldon?  Sometimes I think he is designing some sort of game in his head.  Yesterday afternoon he asked me from the back seat as we drove home, suddenly popping out of his private conversation with himself, “Mommy, which option will you choose:  Story time, Activities, Picture Place, or Taking Care of Me?” 

“I will always choose taking care of you.”  I told him. 

“Mommy, you don’t always have to choose Taking Care of Me.”  He said. 

“But if I don’t take care of you, who will?”  I said. 

“We can have a multi-player function!”  He grinned at his own brilliance with this solution. 

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe inside his mind, he’s building that mythical Village.  A place where it’s safe for a Mommy to sleep while her wunderkind is too busy working out all the great big world’s mysteries to find sleep for himself. 

This cake looks a little dry in the photo, but it matches the bedding chosen for the baby’s room.  It was pretty and sleek in person.  And dark chocolate cake filled with white chocolate mousse with a dark chocolate swirl in the middle.  That’s not boring, right? 

So this chocolate ganache may be the world’s most perfect food.  Sorry Chiquita banana, but really?  It’s fabulous, it makes the peanutbuttercream experience amazing.  People take the first bite and then look up at me with surprise on their faces.  It’s that good.  But . . .  it photographs like crap.  Maybe it’s just that I’m no photographer.  This glossy gorgeous chocolate makes the flash crazy.  I may need to take a digital photography class.  So for now, I’ll just tell you, this is a fairly big, 20″ round, Ubercake, peanutbuttercream, chocolate cake with chocolate sauce and chocolate ganache.  And in real life, it looks awesome. 

I’m not sure of the entire theme of this wedding.  Some Viking, some Roman, and last I heard the bridesmaids were going to dance down the aisle to The Time Warp, yes from Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Colorful . . . 

And why is it that the cakes always look lumpier in the pictures than they did in person? 

So this weekend the boy’s are off to their daddys for the weekend.  And I?  Well, I am going to cook lunch and dinner for about a hundred and fifty of my friends.  With the help of about a half dozen of my best friends.  Because I’ve lost my ever lovin’ mind.  Plus I think it will be fun.  Then next weekend is the wedding of a couple of friends for which I’m catering the dinner and making the cakes.  Last weekend I did some precooking.  Baked cookies and tart shells and brownies, all recipes that freeze nicely, to get a bit ahead of the game.  And for the next week, I’m going to mentally try to figure out how to make the Colosseum in Rome out of sugar . . . 

Cake catch up . . .