Tuesday 8 July 2014

100 Days of Awesome: Day 40-44 - Morrrrrre Caaaaaake, Ribbons, A Wedding, Some Chocolate and Yoga

Whoops. I actually fell asleep writing this on Thursday night/Friday morning. After my 21 consecutive waking hours on Wednesday/into the wee hours of Thursday, I expected to feel somewhat less energetic than I did on Thursday night... and yet, aside from a small dummy-spit, I was still going strong at midnight, some seventeen hours after I had arisen!

Day 40 - Thursday

I put the fondant on the wedding cake I was baking on Day 39 after work. I thought the sheer scale of it was pretty awesome... until the groom texted me at about 10:30pm after I posted this picture on Facebook (note the scale of the 2L juice container):

He did not, it appeared, find the cake to be as awesome as I did, and had a small freak-out about the dimensions of it. Bear in mind that he had no idea what the end product would look like, besides "white fondant with navy blue ribbon" so it's quite possible his mental picture was very different to mine!

After I shouted my least-favourite swear word and possibly startled The Kiwi, I remembered that a) the groom hadn't seen the other layers of the cake that would allow him to accurately judge the proportions of the cake; and b) people who are to be married quite shortly tend to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic and nervous about relatively inconsequential things. So I took a deep breath and calmed myself, explained about the other layers, and told him to trust me because I wouldn't let a friend have an ugly cake. He settled down, which is just as well, because I was about to lob the fondant rolling pin through The Kiwi's nice, glass French doors! Bear in mind that I had only had 8 hours' sleep in the last two nights and was already stressed out about providing them with a beautiful cake, so it's not all that surprising that I was also a bit on edge. And it's awesome that I didn't end up damaging any property in the process... ;-)

This is what I sent to give him perspective of the scale:

I wasn't quite so happy with the way the bottom layer turned out (it's really hard to handle that much fondant, so I've learnt a hard lesson there about when size counts!). But the top two were pretty awesome in the end, and I had them all covered before I went to bed on Thursday night, as I had planned, to give me time to re-cover them if they were horrible. And I didn't need to. It's awesome when plans actually come to fruition :-)

The bottom layer was mud cake with dark chocolate and raspberry ganache filling; the middle layer was fruit cake for the happy couple to keep for a year; and the top layer was a gluten free orange sponge with dark chocoalte ganache as the filling.

Day 41 - Friday

You'd think that getting ribbon on to cake would be a relatively simple affair. But it's actually nowhere near as easy as it sounds! The big base ones were easy enough, but despite liking the clean simplicity of oit, I wasn't quite satisfied with what I saw:

I know a lot of it is because of the angle of the lighting, but to me you can quite clearly see the separate layers where the fondant sagged over the filling, and that's not cool, man! So I had to find a way to detract the eye's attention from it. Luckily I had an assistant to help get the ribbon placement right-ish:

That's right, my assistant has a cake for a head.

Once the placement was about right I made up a template to keep the levels consistent, marked the lines I wanted the ribbons to take using a pin, and then "glued" the ribbon in place. I was a bit surprised at how long it took, but it felt like a pretty awesome achievement at the end of the night. I was well and truly ready for bed, and when I lay down my feet were so incredibly grateful. It felt awesome to be horizontal, and passed out into a deep sleep in about two seconds flat.

Day 42 - Saturday

This was The Big Day! The cake was transported with no trouble at all, the bride's florist gave me offcuts from the bouquets with which to decorate the cake, free of charge, and it stopped raining in time to carry the cake to and from the car. Awesome!

All this time I had assumed the cake would be set up in a dark corner, and only be the focus when the cutting happened. And then I walked in and saw this and realised that everyone would be looking at it right away - right in front of the bridal table:

(Except obviously the cake wasn't already there at that time).

Eep! No pressure!

So I fussed over the geometry of the layer placement, and fiddled with making flower arrangements (something I'd never done before, but now that I have, I'm seriously wondering how florists get away with charging so much for buttonholes and table decorations...), and I think it turned out quite awesomely in the end (although the leucodendron on the bottom kinda let the team down a bit, I feel).

Off to the ceremony, then to the pub to wait for the reception. I had gotten drunk, sobered up and was hung over by about 8pm, so I had a quick, five minute nap in my chair at about 8:30pm and ended up feeling awesome again. Lovely wedding (still haven't been to two that were anywhere near alike), and an awesome opportunity to spend time with awesome people.

Day 43 - Sunday

Started the day with a free facial, which is always awesome. Moved on to spending the afternoon with my BFF Ness and having a cup of tea, some chocolate and a good natter. It's always awesome hanging with my homies! And then off to Richmond for some Vietnamese with The Kiwi, including this awesome Tom Yum soup, which is exactly what I needed on that cold night.

Day 44 - Monday

Ya know, it was a Monday. Eh *shrugs* But there was a yoga class at the end of it, which was awesome. And dad was hospitalised again, two whole days after being released this time, which, although distressing for all concerned, was actually awesome because it means he's back in the system where he can get treatment and hopefully be stabilized. It's frustrating because the clinical staff never, ever listen to what you have to say about the patient and whether they are ready to go home or not. I imagine if they actually had to support a mentally ill family member they might not be so offhand about what families have to say about the needs of someone we've known our whole lives, but I suppose it's not entirely their fault - the health system isn't really set up for chronic mental patients. So hopefully the psychiatrists are actually competent enough this time to see that three admissions in under two months might actually indicate serious mental illness and a need for proper treatment. I won't hold my breath... but it's awesome that he's in the right place, which is a start. Hopefully the new Mental Health Act doesn't screw us over completely. I'm not sure that anyone really thought through the implications of giving a patient more say over their treatment when they don't actually have the insight to perceive that they're ill... Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So on that less-than-awesome note, what was awesome about your weekend?

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