Alive and Kicking

1. Yes, I'm alive.

2. No, I haven't written a blog post in a long time.

3. OK, a VERY long time.

4. Married life, work, and stuff gets in the way of blogging.

5. Hopefully this hasn't resulted in abandonment issues.

6. Here are some cakes.

A couple weeks ago I made a baby shower cake - Instead of being a gender reveal cake, the mama-to-be wanted to keep everything a surprise, so we did a mix of blue and pink with blueberry and strawberry fillings.  

Have I mentioned I love blueberries?

Mama-to be also requested a dozen cake pops.  I have attempted cake pops in the past, and have failed so very very miserably.  As in, is that a cake pop or did you cat leave a hairball on a stick failure...  Needless to say, there was much anxiety over them possibly turning out like this:

But after much soul searching (read: googling the interwebs) I decided to forge ahead with cake pops with the advice of my fellow bakers - thin that sucker out with some shortening!  Apparently if you thin the candy melts the cake pops don't turn out like vomit on a stick; instead they can actually be cute!  Tip #2 - forget colored candy melts - just use sanding sugar.  My life is changed forever.  No more buying 12 different colors of candy melts!  Super easy and super cute - see?!

Aside from the dogs almost getting a cake pop because I'm clumsy and can't hold onto things, these went off without a hitch!

As for the cake, it was fairly simple, aside from the massive panic that ensued when blue cake batter landed on top of pink cake batter.  Poor C tried to come in for the assist, and I may have said nasty things in my state of panic... whoops.  And I only almost ruined it once by putting the pink fondant in the wrong direction, not realizing it, and smoothing it down so it was all nice and pretty on the cake... yeah THAT was fun to take off and re-do.  Oh, and luster dust sticks to chocolate my foot.  I tried everything to get the chocolate letter toppers to shine - no dice. 

Why is that one question mark all wonky, you ask?  It's a mystery. (See what I did there?  Har har har.)

So I finished the cake and the cake pops the night before and got them all ready to go for the next day, but when I woke up the next morning I had a message from papa-to-be that they were headed to the hospital and baby was on their way!  So, sadly, no party was had and the cake was delivered after the baby.  And in case you're curious - pink won.