The CAKES!!!

The final day of preparation before Mac's big day tomorrow!  I submitted my program details today for them to be printed.

And we headed up to Grandmere's with these cakes!  Check out the one in Leiden's lap..you can see the ombre base coat.  Their faces say it all.  This will be a very CAREFUL ride to Grandmere's!

Luckily we got there without incident of any kind, managed to get them inside without trouble, and started forming the rosettes.  I read multiple tutorials on how to do this, and learned a lot.  Because of the way you have to hold the piping bag and tip to the surface of the cake, you can't easily form these rosettes ON the cake.  Each individual 'petal' on the rosette is done separately.  I found a tutorial that explained how to use a cake dummy covered in wax paper to pipe the rosettes onto, so they are CURVED...genius!  I wasn't going to spend ANY more money, but I realized that a Number 10 can is almost exactly 6 inches in diameter, and the rosettes will be going on the smaller 6 inch cake!  The stars are aligning!  Once the rosettes are piped onto the wax paper, you drape them on the number 10 can and put them in the freezer to harden the icing.  After a few minutes you can then take them out, quickly and carefully pull the wax paper off and apply the flower to the actual cake.

Like so!  That giant rosette is the one pictured above, now applied to the cake.  I did different sizes, as well as halves to go at the tops and bottoms.  After you've filled in with rosettes, you have to fake it in the spaces and fill the whole thing in.

The other cake was simpler, because it was just ruffled in the same style as the rosettes.

They seriously turned out AMAZING.  I was so pleased with the results.  Projects don't often turn out like you hope they will, but this one was perfect, and they look gorgeous and much harder to do than they actually are.  Here they are together.

Here's the top of the ombre cake.  A giant ombre rosette!  The smaller rosette cake just had a flat top.  They will be a beautiful part of Mac's day tomorrow.

Mimi came home with this little story that she wrote herself.  She is making leaps and bounds academically and I couldn't be prouder.  Nat is a little girl in her class.