Finishing Touches

DEADLINE DAY: We had two projects to finish today. First, since it's Kennedy's birthday, we pretty much needed to get his cake done, wouldn't you say? The good news was I had the fondant Scrabble board and its pieces for the cake topper, but we still needed a cake to set it atop. A really big cake, because a Scrabble board isn't exactly small. So I ended up having to bake four half-sheet cakes, which stacked next to and on top of each other, were wide enough to accommodate the board.

It was funny, all day long the house smelled so good, the kids were constantly begging for food. I did let them serve as official taste testers a couple of times.GOOD TIMING: Coming back from a mid-morning butter and powdered sugar supply run, we noticed the sprinklers were on at the park by our house. You know what that means! Cake and pinata deadlines be damned - we needed to take advantage of the free sprinkler shower! CJ and Annabelle ran around between three huge sprinklers on two soccer fields for about 20 minutes. It was just the break we needed before getting back to work.

LEGO MANIACS: Mercifully, it was a warm, sunny day, which made painting our LEGO man a quicker process (less waiting between coats). First we painted his shirt black, then his head and hands yellow and we decided on red for his pants.

Once his body was painted, it was time for the detail work. I penciled his eyes and mouth on and then CJ preceded to critique it. "Let me tell you what you screwed up," he offered, cheerily.

We agreed that the mouth I'd sketched was too high on the face, so I drew another. It was better. I painted those (letting Annabelle fill in the eyes). Then it was time for me to paint some sort of Burning Man logo on the LEGO man's chest, since that is his final destination. I just went with something along the lines of the banner on Burning Man's Web site. I was really happy with how it turned out.

With the pinata done, it was back to the cake.

NOTE TO SELF: Don't ever make another Scrabble cake. So. Many. Details.

That said, we had a job to finish. The cakes got stacked and slathered in buttercream. I didn't feel like making more fondant, so I was planning to do a trick where you can use a Viva paper towel to smooth a crusting buttercream frosting so it looks like fondant. I've done it before and it works. But I had one problem - no Viva paper towels. And you really need those because they are very smooth - no texture to telegraph to the frosting. I really, REALLY didn't feel like going back to the store. So, I looked at my in-stock cheapest paper towels $ can buy and saw they had dots forming patterned circles all over them. I thought, hmm, I wonder if I could just emboss that onto the buttercream to make it look like a tablecloth. ... Turns out the answer is YES! Doesn't this (the blue 'tablecloth' under the board and game pieces) look festive!? ;)

BTW, in case you're wondering, the reason "FESTIVE" is in the 'on deck' position on the cake is because I remembered a couple of weeks ago Kennedy mentioned he'd played that word for his highest ever single word score in Scrabble.
DELIVERED: This evening, Annabelle and Christian delivered the pinata to the Burning Man bound neighbors. I wanted Annabelle to go with because she worked quite a bit on it, and she could explain it to them. ;)

When they returned to the house a few minutes later, Bee ran in jumping up and down and yelled, "They LOVED it!!!" She was very proud. :)

Apparently the gang said they were going to use it as their hood ornament, and after they beat it to a pulp, they'll torch it in the Burning Man tradition. ;)