Cake Wars

LET THEM EAT CAKE: So, we did school-y stuff today, I swear. We took an algebra test, and even spent 30 minutes of P.E. time tossing a Frisbee around, but most of the day was about getting a cake done. But that, too, was academic. For instance, we measured diameters (math), mixed colors (arts), did some engineering (to make sure a top-heavy cake wouldn't topple), said some bad words (language arts) when things went wrong ... 

Fortunately, mostly things went right as we made a birthday cake for a 17 year old girl spending her birthday in a local homeless shelter. She wanted a Pokémon themed party, and the least we could do was make a fun Pokémon cake! 

Pokéballs are central to the Pokémon world, and since we have a spherical cake pan, we decided to top the cake with a big Pokéball (made out of crispy rice treat covered in fondant). 

We made a three-layer brownie cake covered in vanilla buttercream for the base. Around it, we put four Pokémon characters as decorations. 

We had to make our front-and-center guy, Pikachi, twice. His first face went all to hell when we tried to put it on the cake. We had to pull it back off. And Annabelle rebuilt it.

 CJ handled the trim around the base of the cake.

 Bulbasaur was one of the faces on the side of the cake.

Driving the cake to the Birthday Dreams headquarters is always nerve-wracking. It's like having fragile triplets on board. :) 

Fortunately, the cake traveled well (thanks, in large part, to our engineering/structural elements inside). 

It's always such a relief when we hand off a cake. The whole time we're driving with it in our car, I feel like I should have the hazard flashers on! I drive around every bump and am typically under the speed limit. 

When we hand the cake off, I think my blood pressure goes down 30 percent.