We definitely did not take Monday off. Instead, we were busy building a cake for Birthday Dreams, a local non-profit who provides birthday parties to kids in homeless shelters.
The child we were making the cake for had requested a LEGO theme, if possible.
Naturally, our first step was hopping online and Googling "LEGO cake." There are thousands of examples to check out. One idea we liked was adding a LEGO character head as the cake topper. We eventually landed on the first tier featuring a LEGO-like wall on the front, and that the cake would feature candy melt bricks that we would make.
Below, the first tier (vanilla, per the birthday boy's request) is a blank slate, awaiting some fun while Annabelle designs the birthday boy's name in the LEGO font. We'd later cut that out of sugar sheets. (It's obscured in the photo atop this post, for anonymity reasons).
We built the head first. The topper is actually an enormous Rice Krispies treat. we used little 6-inch cake pans to make the bulk of the head, and a smaller cylinder to serve as the peg atop his head, and the neck. We made our fondant, colored it bright yellow, rolled it out, and draped the shape. That's always a bit of a dicey process. Fortunately, it was a good batch of fondant, and the draping went pretty darn well.
Next up was putting the face on. Annabelle cut the mouth, eyes and eyebrows out of Sugar Sheets! (a Wilton product), and we affixed them on the fondant with a product called Dab-n-Hold.
We made dozens of "LEGO" bricks by melting candy melt in the microwave, and carefully pouring it into silicone molds. The bricks formed the bottom border of our first tier, and we put some on top of the cake, as well. We also had to make flat bricks for the cake front. Those were just colored fondant, cut into different sizes and then affixed to the front.
We'd never made a LEGO-inspired cake before, so it was all new to us. It was a fun process and within our skill set, at this point. We sure hope the birthday boy liked it!
Right after completing our LEGO cake, we learned that LEGO company is set to launch an International Space Station LEGO set in February. That looks like a fun build, too, with a lot less sugar than our LEGO project. ;)
https://www.space.com/lego-international-space-station-set-launches-february-2020.html?utm_source=notification
PERFECT DISASTER: This weekend, activity at the Space Coast had some of our attention. SpaceX was set to launch an important test flight, a major and nearly final milestone before they can actually start carrying real live astronauts on board their Dragon capsule. The goal of the mission was mission to show the spacecraft’s capability to safely separate from the rocket in the unlikely event of an inflight emergency.
The launch was supposed to happen Saturday, but weather scuttled that. Sunday morning was a go, however, and as we worked around the house, we listened to the post-launch press conference.
I have to say, it was a bit of a change watching a rocket launch and hoping the thing blows up. But the whole point of the exercise was to see if the Dragon could safely escape such a catastrophe. Happy to say, it did.
After the successful demonstration, NASA administrator Jim Bridestine said, “This critical flight test puts us on the cusp of returning the capability to launch astronauts in American spacecraft on American rockets from American soil."
SpaceX founder and chief engineer was equally pleased with the test results. “As far as we can tell thus far, it’s a picture perfect mission. It went as well as one can possibly expect,” said Musk. “This is a reflection of the dedication and hard work of the SpaceX and NASA teams to achieve this goal. Obviously, I’m super fired up. This is great.”
What next? Those in the know say a second quarter 2020 flight of Dragon with a pair of astronauts on board is likely. That will be a momentous occasion, to be sure.
You can watch the test events here ...
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