The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

GOOD NEWS: We received a letter from South Seattle College in the mail yesterday. It was addressed to Christian, but since CJ attends the school, I figured it was actually for him. 

I handed it to him and he oh-so-carefully opened it. (Seriously, it took like five minutes.) I was thinking it was probably a bill of some sort. 

Fortunately, I was wrong. Instead, it was his first-ever, "You've made the dean's list" letter.

Good going, CJ!

BAD NEWS: The first news story I read this morning was terribly disappointing.  The headline on the CNN Business article read, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, built to carry astronauts, faces new safety concerns."

Ruh-roh.

Sure, we knew about the 'anomaly' on the demonstration flight of the Boeing Starliner in December, when misfired due to the capsule's internal clock being 11 hours off, causing its thrusters to misfire and send it off course. (I'm still scratching my head at that one, to be honest.)

NASA has just announced they're launching a full-scale safety review on Starliner, due to "numerous instances where the Boeing software quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects."

Space News reported that a separate software problem was disclosed at a public meeting on Thursday. This deficiency could have caused a "catastrophic failure," they reported. While Boeing  identified and corrected the error before it impacted Starliner's behavior, it's still super concerning that it happened int he first place. 

There's was supposed to be a joint Boeing/NASA press conference today. We'll see what that news brings. We tried to tune in at 12:30 our time to listen, but it wasn't on any of NASA's channels. Not sure what's up with that. ...

At this point, it's looking almost certain that SpaceX is beating Boeing in the quest to return manned spaceflight to America's space program.

WORK IN PROGRESS: We've got another Birthday Dreams cake project in the works here. The recipient is a 12 year old girl who wants a galaxy cake ... and she loves Godzilla. "We have to do that," Annabelle declared upon reading the 'help wanted' post.

So we're in the midst of building an astronaut Godzilla. Yesterday, Annabelle made modeling chocolate and started sculpting his skeleton (which will be covered in fondant).

Another one of the elements we're going to need is a space suit helmet. 

We have a little experience with gelatin balloons from a previous Birthday Dreams project. This time, though, we need the balloons to be clear, and that's a little trickier. We did a fair amount of research and found that our best bet is likely using "platinum" gelatin sheets, to produce the most clear globe possible. 

A post on the gelatin-producer's website takes people through the process step-by-step.

One of the things we learned on their site is that transparent sheet gelatin is graded from lowest to highest gelling power and purity: titanium, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. "The gelling power is also known as the gelatin’s 'bloom strength,' named after Oscar Bloom, who patented the first test for measuring the thickening properties of gelatin. The higher the bloom strength, the greater the gelling capacity of a given amount of gelatin in the same amount of liquid," the Kitchen Alchemy site interestingly informs. 

We went for platinum-grade sheets because it has the highest bloom strength and greatest gelling power. 

Another interesting gelatin factoid: The gelatin has to be hydrated in cold water before being dissolved in hot liquid. "This process of hydration is referred to as “blooming” the gelatin. However, blooming has no relation to Oscar Bloom or bloom strength. Yes, we agree, it’s a little confusing," notes Kitchen Alchemy. "But now you know."

They also have a video about topping cupcakes with gelatin snowglobes. If you're so inclined, you can watch it below.


So, having now actually followed the website's written and video instructions, all I can said is, "Are you kidding me?" It didn't work at all. It was a frickin' hot mess - literally. 

To our eyes, it looked like the sugar never really dissolved all of the way in the gelatin. It was a cloudy mess (and got worse when we poked at it, not better). Thank god I said to Annabelle we were only going to make half a batch (because I wanted back up supplies in case it didn't work). 

After the total fail, we both hopped back online looking for alternative instructions. Fortunately, we found some on another website, Sugar Hero! She used gelatin sheets, but bloomed them for longer, and then put them and a little bit of water right into a saucepan (instead of using a double boiler). This melted nicely was was crystal clear. 

We dipped lightly-greased balloons into the gelatin - three coats for each one. And now, we wait. Sunday morning we'll find out if it worked, or it is a delayed disaster.