Caking with my Best Friend... Sana!

This is Sana.

She's the one on the bike, I'm the one dressed like I'm from the 80s (;

Say hi to Sana folks, cause she's a part of today's post!

So here's a little background for you. Tonight, my boyfriend and his grandfather came over for dinner. His grandpa lives in Minnesota (I live down South). But, he decided to come down to visit Luis and his family. So after 2 years, I still hadn't met his gramps, so tonight was a pretty big deal for me. I was freaking out. I would've sworn that everything was gonna go wrong tonight and I was gonna make a fool of myself. But anywho, I'm working to impress over here. So dinner was a nice lasagna* and for dessert... You guessed it! Cake!

Actually, we had ice cream first and after everyone had had 2 servings of lasagna and a serving of ice cream.... No one had space for cake. Aw boo. Still, they saw it and they thought it was cool (:

Now Sana is my best friend. She's awesome (: And she's been dying to learn how to make cakes from me. Since this week we're on Spring Break, I figured, why not? So she came over yesterday to learn how to decorate a cake. And since I had to make a cake for tonight... Well, you get the idea. The whole two birds with one stone thing? Yea, that's it. Anyways, on to the cakes.

So I didn't wanna look like I was trying too hard (even though I am. Have I mentioned that I was freaking out?) so instead of making and decorating a full sized cake, I decided to make a few of those mini cakes. I used one of Wilton's Mini Tasty-Fill Cake pans to make two chocolate cakes. I filled one up with ganache and the other with strawberry filling.

Here's the pan (: Don't those sample cakes look GORGEOUS? Well... This is what my cakes came out like (after being ganached):

Here's the thing I've learned about ganache (I 'ganached' these and the cake purses on the same day, so it was a first try. Please bear with me), if you don't ice it smoothly on the first time, there is nothing on God's green earth that will smooth it out later. So once I put the fondant on, it still looked pretty ugly

It's all bumpy and stuff... Not pretty. But of course, that's why we decorate the cake. To hide the imperfections and make it look purty. So I'm gonna try to save these little guys, cause goodness do they have some problems.

I'm sure you guys have noticed how the green one is losing its shape. At first I thought it was because of the fillings, so we can't put fondant on it. But when the red one kept its shape I decided that it was the jelly inside the green one that broke out of its little crevice to destroy the shape of my cake.

Notes for future Tasty Fill cakes: Don't use jelly, and try to ice it with icing, to see if the fondant will look better.

Baking is a trial and error game. And so far... these have been an error. I'll make some more later and update you guys on how well it works with the new information. I feel like we learn a lot more from our mistakes than from our failures, but um... I really really wish that the mistakes wouldn't happen before I have to serve a cake to important people. Like customers, or worse... My boyfriend's grandfather =/ I considered just serving one of the cake purses? But again... Trying to hard. Grrr. They were still all on display on the counter for him to see though (;

So let's get started. I let Sana work with the red cake since it's better done than the green one.

Isn't it purty? (:

Well, Sana informed me that yesterday was, in fact, her brother's birthday! So of course, he needs a birthday present, bakery style**! 

Presents come in boxes, and boxes come with bows. So we decided to do a simple bow on top of the cake.

Ta da!

.

This little beauty was made very simply. All we did was roll out a long piece of purple fondant, then come along with the measured roller and cut one inch strips for the bow and half inch strips for the laces. The bow is made by connecting one end of the strip to the other end (This one was 4 inches long) and putting a piece of paper towel inside. But don't glue them together yet, there's more to do in a minute. Then you do the same thing to the other strip. Now, what you can't tell very well from this picture, is that there's another long strip of fondant going from end to end of the cake. It's just aligned with the bow. Very simple. Just one long half inch strip. Then, you have three half inch strips that are two inches long: two for the front ribbons and one to wrap around your two 'bows'.

So back to the bows. To make the bow look realistic, scrunch up the edges then glue them together, then do the same thing to the other one. Now turn them upside down and wrap that third half inch strip around it. Make sure to glue everything. The last two strips get scrunched up as well then stuck under the bow on the cake. And now you have yourself a pretty little package (:

But of course, we had to cover up those nasties around the border of the cake. My favorite technique to do that is the shell border, so I had to teach Sana how to make a line with shells. Here's her practice board:

Sana did a beautiful shell border and I'm very proud of her (:

Look at that awesome shell border! That's an awesome first time right there. Anyways, here's the final product.

Cute (:

While Sana was working on the red cake, I was trying to save this green lump...

Since this is a terrible, ugly, green lump, Sana and I brainstormed for a while, and finally we decided on an apple! Since the ugly lump could probably be mistaken for a green apple. At first we thought about putting a worm*** in there to make it look like the lumpiness is the worm's fault, but we ended up wormless.

So after playing around with the "apple", trying to mold it better, I stuck in a little fondant stem in it (which really was just a piece of brown rolled up)

Looking better already (: But this apple needs a leaf! 

I used a cool cutter shaped like a leaf on a really think block of fondant. Then I curved it a little and left it drying in a little corner.

So while that leaf was drying in the corner I worked on the border. Even though the shell border is my favorite, it doesn't cover enough to hide all the defects on this apple, and shells and apples just don't mix.... So I needed a cool apple-y design for the border. I decided on leaf borders (:

Here are some practice leaves (: I just put them all over the cakes border. At first they were covering the board and I only had the leaves going on the apple where it was messed up, but Sana convinced me to make the leaves go up everywhere. So the apple ended up looking like this 

Awww, look at how much he's grown! I think I might cry a little. You can't even tell that he used to be this 

But as cute as little Mr. Apple looks, we're still missing the final touch. To get that giant leaf to stick I stuck it with a tooth pick then put it on the cake around the stem. Here's the thing about toothpicks though... Once you stick a cake, there's no going back. It stays like that. So beware. Here's our final product, Mr. Apple all grown up!

So now we have an awesome present box for Sana's brother's birthday, and a little apple to serve with my meal (:

Which actually wasn't served, but that's fine. The dinner started really awkward, but my mom just went on and on and on and on talking, so that helped a lot. Overall, I think the night was a success =)

*I'm a purely oven girl. I only know how to make it if it goes in an oven. No stoves for me. If you value your kitchen towels, keep them far away from the stove when I'm around.

**Not that Sana isn't a wonderful sister and hadn't already gotten him a present. Quite the opposite, this was gift upon her previous gifts. Which I do not know/remember what they are XD

***FONDANT worm, not a real one. That would be yucky.