Some sweet friends of Abby and Matt's and I decided to throw a couples shower for the soon to be wed duo. It was a fall party, with a colorful autumn theme of chocolate brown and various bright colors. We (Laura and Mallory) agreed that a "present cake" would be the best option for party, so we got straight to work one evening after work.The cake would be dark brown with a big bright green bow. We decide to start on the bright green fondant, and two and a half hours later, we arrive at the perfect shade. A little frustrated, we decide to make the dark brown fondant the next night. This was much easier...it only took about four large bottles of brown dye to achieve the color we had in mind.
Finally...Friday night...the night before the party, we begin Mission: Cake Assembly. With four layers of dark chocolate cake, cookies and cream filling (Abby's favorite), and a batch of chocolate buttercream, we were excited to put everything together. Then the DISASTER began...none of the layers were the same size, we didn't have the correct tools to pipe the filling, and a batch of buttercream just wasn't cutting it. ALL traces of chocolate in my apartment had been used, so my wonderful mother made a trip to Bruno's around 10:30 to buy every variety of chocolate on the market...
We make another batch of the chocolate buttercream, only to find that we needed ANOTHER!!!!!!! Needless to say, Laura and I were frustrated. We finally trimmed the cakes to the correct dimensions, filled the cake, and iced it (with butter knives and tablespoons...). TIME FOR THE FONDANT!!! The chocolate brown fondant was rolled in cornstarch, so it now looked more like ash. A quick rub down with our top secret ingredient, and all was good. Bow making began around 1:00 on Saturday morning. We were running off a sugar high (so much was inhaled it literally made us sick...but let's not think about that...). We had so much fun making the bow (even if it did take us another hour to complete!) that Laura decided to stay for another hour and a half to help me clean my NIGHTMARE of an apartment kitchen.
Picture those shows where the stay at home wife has a spot of flour on her cheeck and another on her apron. Now imagine that times infinity....powdered sugar, flour, regular sugar, crumbs of chocolate cake, butter, cornstarch, and who knows what else in places that don't even make sense...it was on tops of cabinets, smushed into the rug, even on the couch. Finally, at 3:30 Mission Cake Assembly was complete. It was one of the most amusing nights of our lives. That might be a little sad now that I think about it, but we'll never forget that night...and early morning!
-Mallory
