Queen's Confections: Let 'em eat cake!

I have always admired beautiful cakes. There is just something so breathtaking about the intricate architecture of a mile high tower of cake and frosting made into an object of beauty. And it doesn't have to be extremely ornate. There are some cakes that, in their simplicity, are just stunning.

I did imagine that, some day, I might like to try baking a nice single tier layer cake with some pretty flowers or some other cute design, probably piped with frosting. I didn't know what fondant was back then. But once I discovered that sweet, pliable, soft, play-doughy delight I was hooked.

A friend of mine just found out that the baby she was carrying would be a....well, let me not ruin the surprise just yet. I asked her if, at her upcoming weekend barbecue, she might want to surprise her guests by revealing the baby's gender. She loved the idea. So I went at it and baked a gender reveal cake.

The cake, itself, was a simple vanilla white cake. The frosting was a Swiss Buttercream...light, airy, fluffy, and so delicately sweet, with a hint of orange and plenty of vanilla. It was simply divine. And, when we cut into this cloudy delight, we found out she is having a.........
GIRL
Six layers in variegated shade of pink, each layer getting more intense, revealed the baby's gender. And as soft and feminine as a tiny little baby girl, so was this lovely cake.
It was a great first cake project for me.

But if that wasn't challenging enough, I decided, for the same friend's baby shower, to try my hand at a 2-tier cake. Now, my oven, as I may have already mentioned somewhere, is tiny. It has one rack, and it is not calibrated. Well...imagine having to bake two three-layer tiers of cake in a tiny oven, one layer at a time! So, what did I decide to try? I decided to bake a 3" cake and cut the cake into 3 layers.
Not. A. Good. Idea. The cakes, both the 8" and 10", burnt on the outside. Ugh.

Not wanting to have another failure on my hands, I reached out to my best buddy and pal. He lives in Manhattan and has a lovely huge oven with two racks. Hallelujah!! He came all the way to Brooklyn to pick me up (along with my daughter and half of my kitchen) in his valiant Mini-Cooper, and away we rode. Now his oven is not calibrated either, but I was wise to the possibility, and made sure to buy an oven thermometer so that I could monitor the temperature and avoid another disaster. The cakes turned out just fine. He dropped us all off again at around midnight, and I began to work on my delectable, dreamy Swiss Buttercream. I was up until about 2:45, making buttercream, frosting the cakes, putting them away in the refrigerator to solidify overnight, cleaning up the kitchen. Preparing for the final steps of decoration.

I woke up at 5am that very same morning. I rolled out my fondant and started covering the top tier first. Horror of horrors. The fondant was misbehaving, tearing all over. I was ready to cry. But from the living room I hear my 5 1/2 year old saying, "It sounds like you are having a rough time! Don't give up...you can do it!" My heart melted. I knew she was right. I always teach her the same lesson...and she was throwing it right back at me. That has to be the greatest reward ever. I know it stuck!!! And so I went on, coming up with ways to hide the naughty tears in the fondant. And here is the way the top tier turned out.

Then I proceeded to work on the bottom tier. It was a lot more manageable. And here is it

And just in the nick of time...I got a phone call from my friend's mom and her mom's boyfriend. They were downstairs waiting to take us to the shower. But the cake wasn't done yet! They were an hour early. So I packed up my tools and my fondant and some food coloring, dowels, cardboard discs and other fun stuff...and off we went. Once we got to my friends' home on Long Island, I got to work assembling and finishing the cake.