D322: Ah! Bees!!

There's a buzz, buzz, buzz at the partyyyy...

So I committed to making our new little 2-year old a cake she would recognise and enjoy.  She loves Buzzbee and I'm very glad I chose this option.  It's a character that doesn't change much and I can't very a lot.  He has very few features and only two colours, and is based on a simple shape common to cakes.  He doesn't even have limbs.  Why I deliberated for so long over other options is a mystery.

After watching lots of YouTube videos of people making buttercream, and colouring, rolling and laying down fondant, I decided to dive in.

Two 12" cakes layered with bought ganache.

The cake is one I've previously used and quite like.  Well, love, actually - it's so quick!  I made up a chocolate variation for this cake.
Take one Nigella Lawson Awesome Vanilla Cake recipe; add 3 tbsp of cocoa to the dry ingredients and 1 tspn of instant coffee, dissolved in just enough water, to the liquids.
I used a lined 12" round tin and baked it at 350F for 50-55mins.  See the lighter spots on the top? It's done when those finally appear in the centre.

So I baked one cake during nap, had a shop (of course!) and then baked the second before dinner.

The face was put down first, on a thin layer of buttercream icing.
The features were placed on top afterward.

I did all the decorating and arranging after dinner, which took about 4 hours.

I prepared the buttercream first (a double helping: 800g pure icing sugar to 250g of whipped butter), but didn't colour it.
Then I put the buttercream aside and tackled the construction.

I put down a thin layer of buttercream to help the cake stick to the board, and placed the first cake down.  I took about half a cm off the top of this bottom layer to level it a little.  To flatten it completely would've taken a third of the bulk, which felt like a terrible waste, even though my hovering Hub and MIL felt it would've been very, very worthwhile.  So, while the bottom layer wasn't completely flat, the 500g of ganache did a great job levelling the difference between the layers, and the bottom of the upper layer barely curved at all.

I decided to do the face next, while my brain was still pretty good.  This face used about 750g of fondant and I used gel food colouring for both the fondant and the buttercream.

My post from a few days ago shows the templates I used for this cake.  They were made with a dinner plate for the face and some food containers for the eyes.  I used a Math-o-mat and trial-and-error for the mouth.

I also made a strip of paper that fits inside the top half of the face to help place the eyes.  The strip was a wide as the distance from the edge to the eye (about 15mm) and marked where the top of the eyes should align.

With the yellow band of 'fuzz' on the base.  I patted it with the prongs of a fork
to make it look fuzzy.   The fondant yellow is a richer colour than the bright stripe.

With the black buttercream.  Look at the widdle hand...

I wish I'd made the face features much thinner, instead of the 1/4" of the face.

I asked Hub to stay up with me by this stage, for company and moral support.  He was the one who looked up how to adhere fondant to fondant: with a paste made from melting a bit of fondant in hot water.


Making the black was so much fun.  Doing the two yellows was a careful task, adding a little bit at a time. (Two dips of Lemon yellow plus a little dab of Tulip red.) But with the black... well, you can hardly make it too dark.  That was fun.

The hands and feet were cut without a template.  I flipped the first hand and made the second by cutting around that; ditto with the feet.  I also chickened out of fingers, which Buzzbee normally has.  Midnight brain said no.

...and the widdle feet. 
Hard to see, but the hand on the right side is waving.

We added the antennae on the day - just some 12mm x 30cm black pipe-cleaners curled as you like, stuck into the ganache layer at an angle.

On Sunday morning Bub saw the cake in the kitchen and exclaimed "Wow! Big cake! That's amazing!"  It was a success already!

D247-9: The Beginning of an Era

Sounds grandiose? Nnnnnnope.

I bought a Bernina B530 on Friday.

I'm going from a Bernina 807 minimatic, an entirely mechanical, mostly metal, 1969-ish, much loved machine with only 6 stitches...

To this:

It doesn't matter that it's not the highest of the Bernina range, or that it doesn't to embroidery.  I still hear choirs when I turn it on.

I also got a BSR (a Bernina Stitch Regulator, which watches you move the fabric and keeps the stitches even), for freemotion quilting, and a walking foot.  I've spent the days since reading the manual, watching YouTube videos and having a bit of a play...

I tried out a few decorative stitches and some stitch programming, shown on the left. The right side is playing with the BSR foot and I tried out doing pivoted zigzags with the walking foot too, coz that's what I wanted to be doing with my next project.

The purchase of this machine is a whole saga in itself, but too long to tell. I hope to do a review in a few weeks time, but want to have first finished the quilt and made at least one garment, and maybe a softie.

We've been away for a week with the inlaws, enjoying mild weather by the beach, and I'm very glad to be able to stave off any holiday hangover with such a long awaited and much pondered purchase.  

I

am

delighted.

:D

D148-51: oh my goodness gracious me oh my

I

Am writing this

With a tall cup of tea in front of me

And nothing in particular to do

Just for a while.

Here are my Maker wins at the end of our first First Birthday season.

One: The Bunting

I finished the birthday bunting on Friday night, in good time for the in-laws' visit on Saturday.  Even more rewarding was that Bub noticed it as soon as she entered the dining room that morning and made lots of sweet noises and pointing gestures.  *glee!*

Sub-wins include it looking nice and neat and not having to correct any spelling errors.

Two: The Party Favours

Sorry for the poor pics. The colours were rather cool though!

I finished the biscuit icing in good time for the party, though wish I'd been quicker on Saturday morning.  I was finishing them off as family arrived, but it did help explain everything I was doing.

I even chose to 'delegate' in a way.  I had thought 6 biscuits in a bag might be too much for little kids, but two bags for bigger kids makes it clearly unfair.  So I had bags of four and of two, and explained that parents could decide how much was enough for their children, considering how many chocolate crackles, corn chips and pieces of fairy bread they'd already had.  And there was heaps that way, with lots of choice.

Deciding to do bags of twos and fours meant I didn't need to bake and ice more biscuits so that every child would get six.  Yay for brains!

Three-A:  The birthday cake

What was left after the party

I took a risk and used Nigella Lawson's Awesome Vanilla Cake recipe.  The risk was in never having used the recipe before and that it uses oil instead of butter.  I've made cakes with oil before, but not with no butter at all.  Initially I could smell the oil really easily.  However, I think that smell largely left once it cooled and the butter icing made a good difference for the taste.

I chose the recipe because it's ridiculously quick to make and there was a pretty good recommendation on the webpage.  And it is very quick to make.  Seriously.  You couldn't even use it in a race, it's that quick. Beat egg and sugar for 1min, add the rest, beat for another minute. Pour.  See?  Zoom.  Took longer to line the pan.

On Saturday night Hub helped me make it a random rainbow cake, which was fun and successful.  In the end I didn't get a proper shot of the cake.  I thought it looked rather amateurish, but it tasted yum and looked happy, which is all the really matters.

Three-B:  The birthday cake again

By Sunday morning I was worried one cake wasn't enough.  So I did the time calculations and after putting Bub down for her morning nap I made another layer, this time without colour.  It had cooled enough to sandwich the two cakes together with blackberry jam, cover it with butter icing and arrange some Smarties on top (all the pink, red and purple ones in the shape of a 1), all completed mere minutes before we left.  Two helpers made a difference too, which leads me to...

Four: Asking for help

I called on one of my BFFs. She's the kind of person I'd trust with my baby, my keys, my kidneys.  She's that good.  At less than 12hrs notice she came to the party 90mins early, bringing her fiancé, and they helped us chop, slice, scoop, decant, sort, decorate, arrange, glad-wrap, pack, transport, arrange, heat, serve, tidy, clean, wash, vacuum and mop.  It was above and beyond the call.  I sincerely look forward to being able to pay it all back, coz I don't think I can thank her enough to actually match my gratitude.  It could not have happened without them.

And not a Maker aspect but a win nevertheless...

Scoring the venue!

We had hoped to use the park on the day and told our friends a few weeks ago.  Then we realised there was a hot plate there so thought sausage sizzle, yeah? Little casual, whatevs.  Then we got into the week before and knew that we'd been kidding ourselves.  August has been windy. (How windy? More italics please.)  It's been showers and generally random <10°C all over the shop.  Yuck.  And we were going to take our friends to the park?  In the wet wind?  With food that rolls?  Hurrrrrrr...

So long story short, I found that the room my parents' group uses was not only for hire, and not only available for that afternoon, but about 60% the regular cost coz I'm a member.*  Full kitchen, outdoor play area and lots of toys appropriate for my friends' kids?  Yes please. The only downside was the start time being 90mins later, but in reality we needed all the prep time we could get.

And the extra icing on the cake: Bub enjoyed herself and rolled with the day in very fine form.  She was a star.

Our little One Year Old girl!

It was a total success.

--------

*At this point I knew I was about to do exactly what I said I wouldn't do, which was cater for all our friends at a hired venue.  I was sure panic attacks would ensue and I'd unravel in a pyjamaed, crazy-haired, watery, jittering mess.  Two things saved me: being too tired and busy to actually build up any anxiety, and knowing, in the back of my mind, that all my friends would be absolutely fine if I'd chucked it all and ordered a dozen pizzas.

D131: Saturdelights - not a particularly crafty post...

Today didn't start out that well. Well, actually, it was a glorious morning, weather wise, but my plans were thwarted early on.

I've not been feeling strong enough, or 'back together' enough to go back to the exercise I did before becoming pregnant.  Jaunty swing dancing and bouncy running just feel beyond my ankles and strength right now. There's this phenomenon that occurs for some people after pregnancy: weak wrists. It's gotten me good and I think it happens to the ankles too. Every time I try to break into a jog I just marionette into the ground.  I was thinking Pilates might be a good option.  I've done it before and it's challenging enough, but after talking with my osteopath I'm flummoxed as to why I hadn't yet properly considered his suggestion of yoga.  Yoga!  I can do yoga!

So an online search said there are yoga classes at a joint nearby.  Within walking distance.  On a Saturday morning! This Saturday morning!  IT WAS A SIGN PEOPLE.

I arrived to a locked door.  I was that person peering into a clearly dark, empty and closed business, checking for another entrance, reading all the posters about Wednesday night's class but seeing no sign of the Saturday class their Facebook page promised.  And then, as I texted hub to see if he'd mind me taking a second brekky, the instructor turned up to let someone in and explained how there had been signs announcing the cancelled Saturday classes.  Hmmm, not on the online places though.  In good form, she offed me a freebie class for Wednesday.  I'm yet to decide...

So I went to the new cafe a few doors up.  By pure coincidence, I took the table the yoga instructor and her friends abandoned (too small) and felt only slightly awkward about her being across a small room.  I enjoyed a very good coffee with an almost perfect French toast and had a good uninterrupted think about the opinions of The Age readers and editors.  Silver lining win thanks to small pleasures.

And the day continued on that curve...

Some warm sun, finally...

...post-pool fuzz...

...good quality ingredients - juicy sultanas and apricots.

Mmmm, buttery sweetness. Or sweet buttery butter. Ghhhhh....

Cookies!

And a good long-tail cast-on.

Postal goodness!

It arrived! I bought myself a gift pack from Spoonflower. It includes swatches of the fabric they sell, a gift voucher, a book, a notebook and a pencil.

I have yet to really look at the book but it's pretty spesh with a CD and all. It even has printed paper (like wrapping paper but uber stylish) in the back which I will never use because no occasion will ever be special enough and they’ll totally go to waste.  It even has a tutorial on how to make your own fabric patterns that you can upload and have created and mailed by Spoonflower. I do not consider my artistic skills anywhere near good enough for such extraordinary extravagances.

Ugh, now I have to decide what to buy with my voucher. Have you seen that site?! It's the hundreds & thousands of Alice in Wonderland. Drunk swimming through Jelly Bellies. Laying down in puppies.  I'll OD on the colours alone...