The Cake That Was So Awesome It Deserves It's Own Post

It all started with this %@!?!**$ picture. I have never been a mom to make spectacular cakes. Although I admire those moms who are. But for me, if I want spectacular, I go to the grocery store and purchase one. If I don't, I make a little box of Betty Crocker and call it good. If you read this blog at all, you know I love to make fun, easy, cute themed-treats...with a major emphasis on EASY. But I always just get too frustrated when I try to make something extra cool, because it never looks right, so I just don't do it.

Case in point: the two-layer cake I tried to make Zach for his 8th birthday. It wasn't supposed to be all that hard, no fancy icing or fireworks or anything. Just two layers. Simple right? NO! Needless to say, I was happy that Zach's party had a Star Wars theme because the cake ended up looking a good deal like Jabba the Hut would if he were wearing a shirt saying "Happy 9th Birthday Zach!"...not on purpose. So I just don't do the major effort cakes. The store or box cakes taste pretty darn great anyway (I like cake, frosting too). And the boys really haven't cared that their coolest looking cakes come out of a cardboard box with a little plastic window, so why should I?

But in February, when that month's Family Fun magazine arrived in our mailbox, Luke caught a glimpse of the "easy to make" farm cake inside...and it was all over from there. He's been dreaming of that cake ever since. For a month, he'd pull the magazine out every day and say, "There's my birthday cake!" Seriously. Everyday. At least 2 to 3 times. He'd gaze at it lovingly, savoring the imagined first bite of a pig's ear or a chick's wing. As time went on, the magazine's wrinkled-with-use, endlessly-caressed, slightly sticky-with-drool pages were visited less, but the cake was still mentioned frequently, especially as Luke's birthday approached. "My birthday is coming. And you and Nana are going to make my cake!" Sigh. Is it expensive? No. Is it beyond my ability? Perhaps, but it's worth a shot. Is it worth my time and effort to bring joy to my little boy? Yes indeedy.

So before leaving for Steamboat Springs, I packed up my mixer, cake and cupcake pans, every ingredient item I didn't want to have to buy there, some extra flour for cooking at altitude, and a hearty dose of "I can do it." Once there, I enlisted the help of my Mom and Pat and we took on the cake.

My favorite part was making and sampling the buttercream frosting. OH.MY.DELICIOUS.FATTY.GOODNESS. I will never buy another can of frosting in my life! I could eat buttercream frosting all the livelong day, everyday; and considering the size of this cake and how much we brought home from Steamboat, I have been eating buttercream frosting all the livelong day, everyday!
The making of this cake was truly a group effort. Pat did the decorating of the pigs and cows and some of the chicks. She also pulled apart strand after interminable strand of peel-and-pull Twizzlers. It got Adam and I talking about the worst jobs we could think of ever having, like being the guy who tapes the little straws to the WD40 cans. Pat did a fabulous job. The animal cupcakes were almost too cute to eat! We loved them!
Adam and my dad did their part by keeping the boys preoccupied in the pool and out of the condo. Dave helped out by jesting about our Herculean effort over a little boy's third birthday cake and keeping Tommy, who at this point was feeling the pain of too-little napping, entertained.
I made the cakes, cupcakes, and icing; iced the cakes, cupcakes and silo; did the detail work on the barn and silo and the spots and nostrils on the cows; built fences; and was in charge of final assembly. The tedium of putting that darn licorice on the cakes was mind-numbing. It took extra long because I had to use a knife to cut the licorice strands instead of scissors, which our condo did not have. All in the name of love!
My mom bravely took on chickie wings and beaks which required the cutting of jelly candies that did not want to be cut, but preferred, instead, to stick to the knife. And once they did relent and disdainfully allowed themselves to be cut, they refused to stick to the cupcake! On top of that, she had the hardest part of all: icing the cut-in-the-shape-of-a-barn pound cake that was of the same mind-set as the jelly candies and did not want to be iced. With each application of icing, bits of "barn" would roll off onto the icing knife, leaving very little icing behind. It was like we were "caking" the icing instead of icing the cake! But my mom pulled through using copious amounts of frosting and a lot of patience!
VOILA! Don't even say it's not as cool as the picture in the magazine. It is AMAZING. Oh yeah. The cake was a work of thankfully no blood, a bit of sweat, a few tears and a lot of love. And we were so proud! Look at that baby! It doesn't even kind of resemble Jabba the Hut. Pefect? No. But perfect to us. Oh, and it tasted so very, very good too.
Ta-da! All for you baby...all for you.
Luke was so grateful. He didn't notice the marshmallow halves that I had to prop under the listing barn to keep it upright, nor did he notice that I forgot to put nostrils on the pigs. He loved it...the look of it, the taste of it, the animalyness of it. His dream had come true! And that is what it was all about, right? That is what made this cake worth every. single. baking. icing. frustrating. laughing. assembling. jesting. crazy. cakey. minute.