Shamu Cake

I made this Shamu cake this week. Please don't laugh at him - you might hurt his feelings! I forgot his eyes!!!!! And his tail is deformed and seriously out of proportion with his body!

I made the whale using a rice crispy treats recipe, then iced it with butter cream and then covered it with fondant. I then cut away the fondant for the white parts.

I made the tail the same way, but I didn't realize it was too thick until it was already covered with fondant. I didn't have anymore black fondant and it was too late to get more, hence the out of proportion tail!

His tail probably wouldn't have looked so bad had I made his tail fins bigger. Then they started falling apart on me. So if you were to look close you would see a lot of patching going on! And I know, I know - they aren't shaped right. But he was lucky to even have tail fins at that point!!

The water is blue butter cream icing. I used a spoon to pull the waves up. If I do this cake again, I think I will try tinted piping gel for the water, that way it would be shiny.

Oh, well, better luck next time!! But this was a really fun cake to make!

Kindergarten Graduation, Already?!?

Last night we attended the kindergarten graduation of our oldest granddaughter.

Time just goes by way too fast!! It seems impossible that she is already six years old.

(Here she is posing in front of a giant box or crayons.)

Her class put on a cute little program showing some of what they learned during the school year.

It was so funny!!

She attended a Christian school and there were only six students, four girls and two boys, in her kindergarten class. They spanned the spectrum from painfully shy to absolute extrovert. My granddaughter was somewhere right about in the middle.

After the graduation, my daughter had all of our family that went to the graduation (22 of us) over for pizza.

I made a Mayonnaise Cake (I know, it sounds gross, but it's the most moist chocolate cake you'll ever eat!) and vanilla home made ice cream to finish out the festivities.

It'll be two years until our next granddaughter is old enough to graduate from kindergarten. I'm sure the time will go by way too fast!

Floured Hoodlums!

I just had to post these pictures of two of my granddaughters!

The older one, who is three, decided it would really enhance their sliding experience if she poured a five pound bag of flour on the slide. And while you're at it, why not get another bag to dump on your sister's head?!?! (She's twenty months old).

Needless to say, their mommy wasn't too happy about the mess. She apparently has no sense of humor. Where did I go wrong?!?

But since I'm a grandma, I've earned the right to laugh about it!

Although, after this incident, fearing for my daughter's sanity and my granddaughter's well-being, I kept the instigator for a couple of days!

Don't they look like a couple of hoodlums?

I'm going to be keeping these hoodlums, plus their six year old sister, for fifteen days while their mom and dad are out of the country on a missions trip this summer.

I may not be laughing so loud then!

I've already started making a list of things for their grandpa to do around the house in preparation of their visit - not necessarily for the safety of the grand kids, but to insure the safety of our own mental health!

Fire Truck Cake

I made this fire truck cake this weekend for the first birthday of a little boy whose father is a fireman in our area. It was fairly easy to make, but I had quite a time getting the fondant even close to the right shade of red!

Also, the fondant had tiny little splits that didn't go all the way through. They initally appeared on the cab, so I rolled it thicker for the back of the truck, thinking I had just rolled it too thin. But it happened there as well. I mentioned it to my friend who also decorates cakes, but doesn't do much with fondant, and she thought she remembered the teacher in our cake decorating classes telling us to use gum paste in our fondant. Anyone know anything about that?

Anyway, I hope Carter had a Happy First Birthday!!