zebra, cake and a party

As I mentioned in this post, I was asked to make the graduation cake for my sister's step-daughter's graduation party this past Saturday. The party was actually for Heaven and her cousin Destinee who graduated from 8th grade this year. The request was for a fondant covered zebra print cake with pink and purple thrown in. I was excited to take on this project since I'd never made one before and because it's just fun!

Last Tuesday my sister and I went out and purchased everything we needed for the cake and for the additional cupcakes I was going to make. On Thursday I started making the fondant and other decorations like the loops for the bow and the little balls for the bottom of each tier. I made the bow and balls in pink and purple and you should have seen my hands from all the food coloring! Luckily it came out pretty quickly but boy were they pink! ha!

On Friday I started in on baking the cakes. It's been rather hot here recently so I wanted to get the baking done early so that the house wasn't hot during the afternoon. Well, I'll make a long story short, but I set all the layers out to cool, covered them with paper towel and headed out to the store and for some lunch. I was gone for about an hour and when I returned, my retarded cat ate one of the layers! I was so upset. What kind of cat eats strawberry cake?! So I had to head back to the store and buy another cake mix and bake it again! My oven was on ALL DAY! My house was so warm and I was very aggravated! But everything turned out fine and the cake turned out beautiful!

My sister came over and helped out with the bow and other things and we finally got everything done by 10pm on Friday night. My feet were aching so badly along with my back. I'm not too sure I'll be making a cake anytime soon. It's so much work even though it's a lot of fun...but a lot of work.

On Saturday morning before leaving to take everything over to the party, I made a little sign for the front of the cake and it turned out pretty cute too! I just loved how the cake and cupcakes turned out and we got a lot of compliments on them!

Here's how it turned out!

 

You can kinda see the cupcakes in the back ground in the last photo. The pictures I took of them didn't turn out well so I didn't post those. They were the same flavors as the main cake, strawberry and devils food and had buttercream icing on top that was purple and pink with black sugar sprinkles on top. They were baked in pink and black zebra print cupcake liners as well as a pretty purple damask pattern liner. I just loved the colors of them! Very girly which I love!

So that was my second fondant cake adventure! I love the fondant recipe I found and it came out so much better this time than when I made Evan's birthday cake. I added some vanilla extract as well as some butter flavoring and that really added a great flavor. I recommend it if you ever make fondant!

Of course being brand new to the cake making world, I had to look up how to do such things and YouTube was again my hero! I found these two videos, here and here, on how to make the zebra print and it was very helpful. I also found this website that showed how to make the bow. So easy! The internet is very helpful and I love it!

So anywho, this week features no cake making and that means Yay! I do have a photoshoot at the end of the week that I'm excited for and a few doctors appointments to attend. Also my cat, the one who just so happened to eat the cake, is suffering with a bladder infection again. He had one earlier last year and luckily it was easily treated so tomorrow I'm calling the vet to get his medication to help get rid of it again. I hate seeing him like this. Would you say a little prayer for him? His name is Milo and he just so loveable...even if he does eat my cake.

Have a good week!