A Cake Report?

Lacey is in the fourth grade this year and just had a school project due today, that I happened to find out about LAST NIGHT!! Anyway, so she gets home from school yesterday and proceeds to tell me that her "Cake Report" is due tomorrow! I looked at her, and I'm like, "What Cake Report, Lacey?" She was gone from school on Monday and apparently her class was given an assignment of making a cake to look like the cover of the book that they are currently reading and then tell the class about the book. In that moment I had a bit of a panic attack!

I kind of freaked out for just a mere minute and then I calmly decided, okay, I can do this. I have just taken two cake courses. This shouldn't be too tough! I went upstairs and started mixing the cake mix to get the cake cooking. At this point the time was about 3:15 or so, and I just kept thinking, I will never get this done. Either that or else I will be up all night doing it! YAY me!! When that cake finished cooking I put it in the fridge to cool while I then started making all the icing I would need to complete this "little project"! The main icing for the cake was quite a task actually getting a color that compared to that of the book. I finally accomplished it through a lot of trial and error. The icing started out white, then using burgundy coloring it turned it PURPLE!! That was not okay at all, so I thought maybe adding black would work. WHATEVER! That turned it gray, then my next idea was to add red and that helped a little, but it still just wasn't quite right. I had some leftover pink icing that I decided to add just for kicks and funny enough that actually even helped some. I also had some leftover chocolate that I decided to add and thought if anything it couldn't hurt! With that final decision I actually ended up getting a color very close to what I needed! By that point the cake was cool enough to frost so I did that and then put it back into the fridge while I made a new batch of icing for the rest of the colors I would need for the cake.I got all that done and at that point it was just a matter of putting the whole thing together. I finally finished at about 8:45 p.m. So, it didn't take as long as I thought it would and I was pretty happy with the results! Even after that mere minute of freaking out I had actually pulled it together and still got a good nights sleep!! Lacey was so excited to have me bring it to her classroom so her class could see it! That alone made me feel like the time was all worth it.

I decided I had better take some pictures of the cake so I had proof of the "Cake Project" that Lacey did!! Okay, okay! I mean the project I did, but does that REALLY matter? I think the teachers assign these kind of projects just to see how much the parents actually get involved. Well, I think all Lacey did to help with this project was stir some of the icing!! That's enough to say she helped, right? Anyway, I thought it would be cool to take a picture of the book and the cake right next to each other to actually see the comparison!
So, today I took the cake to Lacey's class so she could do her report and her classmates LOVED the cake!! They were like, "Oh my gosh, did you make that cake?" I told them I did and then they were asking me how long it took. I told them it took about 4 hours and they were like, "Holy Cow!" Even the teacher was impressed and the first question she asked me was, "Are you a cake decorator?" Well, I wouldn't go THAT far, but I did take a couple of classes at Michaels. It's really only my 4th cake so I wouldn't go as far as calling myself an actual "Cake Decorator" yet. It was a fun project and everyone loved it, so that gave me a little bit of encouragement anyway. What really matters, is that it was for Lacey and I'm glad that I could help her and that she was happy with how it turned out!!