A Birthday Bulldog

My man Grant loves dogs. He is particularly obsessed with fat and/or ugly ones (an obsession I suspect has its nexus in his parents breeding Shar Peis... and before anyone thinks the Sheean clan may be at all offended by my referring to the breed as either fat or ugly, "fat" and "ugly" are good things in Grant's book, at least when it comes to dogs!), and his very favourite fat and ugly dog is the bulldog.

Quite a while ago, Grant announced that he would like a cake shaped like a bulldog for his birthday, and me, being a bit of a baker, rose to the challenge.

As it turns out, though, I'm not much of a sculptor. I suppose anyone who ever sat through an art or pottery class with me would know exactly how indirect a relationship there is between what I see in my head and what actuates from my two hands in front of me, so I shouldn't really expect this to improve without a substantial amount of practice. I always stood by the fact that I can make things taste fantasic but damned if I can make them look presentable, which I was hoping to change by attending a cake decorating course, only, because I'm up at Koondrook for work, I can't go to the course. Boo.

So all there was for me to do with my exceptionally limited pool of talent was do as much research as possible, and then practice. The former wasn't at all easy. I had hoped that, somewhere in this wild and whacky web (that's what www stands for, isnt it?) of ours, that some other freakazoid would have attempted to create a three-dimensional bulldog cake.

After some light pseudo-stalking of people who had posted the same question on various baking message boards (by which I mean, I emailed them asking if they'd found any success) and finding zero success, I happened across a link from Cakewrecks.com's Sunday Sweets (this part of the site features really, really awesome cakes, unlike the Wrecktacular ones featured from Monday through Saturday). Purely by chance, I scrolled through the gallery of a particular bakery whose cakes I really liked - Cakes To Remember, in Massechusetts - and found A BULLDOG CAKE!!!

My next step was to email the baker, Ellen Bartlett, and beg her for help. Ellen had the wonderful good grace and generosity to email me back almost immediately and give me basic instructions, which helped a great deal with the process, but which, at the end of the day, were never going to make me a better sculptor. But without her, any form of canine-like cake would never have happened.

This is what the cake was supposed to look like...

(hello, puppy! So lifelike! So much expression in those buttercream jowels and brow! What a talented lady)

And this is what my practice attempt looked like...

(...um.... oh, my... what a nice, pixellated, car crash victim kind of doggie! (note to self - using buttercream coloured with cocoa isn't as easy as Ellen made it look)) 

And this is what the final product looked like...

 (Puppy has an oddly crazed look about him, but at least he looks like a dog now! Sort of...)

I can see it now - tears of laughter are streaming down your faces. But if that's what it takes for the next freakazoid whose boyfriend wants a bulldog cake for his birthday to find a little guidance, then so be it! I also happen to think it looks like another breed of dog - the name escapes me, but one of those smallish dogs - so at least it resembles a dog, if not the dog I wanted it to.

Thanks to Ellen's instructions, without which I would have been quite lost, this is how I arrived at a dog-shaped final product - two oblong tins, one round, and baked two cakes in each (I think she had more layers in her instructions and suspect this involved splitting the cakes and glueing them with MORE delicious buttercream, but I'm lazy). For each set of three differently-sized cakes, I used two cake mixes (industrial, mind you, not supermarket!), which means that there were four cake mixes used in total for this cake. I then glued them together with buttercream, including dowels and cardboard to support every second layer.

 (If I've learned one thing out of this, it's that I'd probably make a decent bricklayer - my grouting work was quite good!)

Froze it to make it easier to carve.

(make sure you've got room in your freezer before you even think about this step!)

Carved it.

 (This step results in much delicousness, and also made me realise that I should have made the cardboard supports much smaller than the actual layer to allow for sculpting. I had to do this retrospectively - once the cake was actually glued together - with a Stanley knife, and it almost ended badly!)

Put a crumb coat of buttercream on it, added two more layers of buttercream and decorated it.

(I'm not sure if he's laughing or wants to take a piece out of me... eeeeeeeeasy, boy...)

Oh and the ears are made of sugarpaste, which I shaped and then dried over a little rolled piece of paper towel covered in baking paper, then, once dried, smeared with buttercream.

Have I mentioned how much I love buttercream??

So there you have it. It's not really a bulldog, but Grant loved it, and I personally think I get bonus points for effort!

Is Nessie ever going to be a professional baker? Probably not. But I think I might give some of those kids' birthday cakes from the AWW birthday cake book that EVERYONE's mum has a whirl. They're a heck of a lot simpler, and come with patterns. How unlike me to want to run before I can walk.

But just think - if one practice attempt brought me from this level...

(*shudders*)

to this standard...

(*shudders slightly less violently*)

...then imagine what further practice could do!

PS - even though I loved playing, I quite the piano because I didn't like to practice... this doesn't bode well for my bulldog cakes, does it...

Food for Thought - Mosquitoes 101

I've been on the go a bit over the last few months since my last project finished up in Adelaide, and it's all been work-related.

First, I headed up north to the Territory, where I visited sites my company has acquired in Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin. It was quite novel travelling for work, and a bit of a head trip that they would fly me about (yay! Frequent Flyer points!), put me up in a relatively nice hotel worth in excess of $200 per night, and chuck me the keys to a hire car with reckless abandon.

Besides being tired of running all over the place, it was great seeing Grant in Alice Springs and my cousin Darren as well as Grant's parents in Darwin, and also catching up with an old work mate in Katherine.

That was part of a month I spent in our South Australian head office, and during that time I was pulled here and there and given extra work to do that wasn't relevant to the reason I was sitting in the office (which is why, when I'm done blogging, I will be doing some of the work I didn't quite finish at the time. It's very close to finished, mind you, but it's kind of grating on my nerves!).

And then last week, my company very generously flew my Good Friend and Ever Willing Partner In Crime, Alice, over to Adelaide so that she could drive back with me to Melbourne, where I spent a week in our office in Richmond, familiarising myself with the new project. As if being Corporate Nessie in Adelaide hadn't worn me down for four weeks, I had had enough of it all AGAIN on my very first day in Melbourne, when it took me nearly two hours to get to work. Sure, half an hour of that was because I overshot my turnoff due to roadworks confusing me, but most of it was the traffic. It was just awful. So the rest of the week saw me rising before six to be at work at 7, so that I could leave before 4. Ugh.

And now, I'm in Barham, NSW. It's a tiny little town on the Murray, about half way between Swan Hill and Echuca. It's a little over 300km from Melbourne and is on the opposite side of the Murray to Koondrook, its Victorian counterpart. The two towns are separated by a single lane bridge that's more than a hundred years old and has a Give Way sign on one side, and a section in the middle that lifts(ed?) up to admit the paddle steamers of old. It's such a small town that the bloke who delivered flowers to me yesterday said hello in the street this morning!

To the mosquitos.

Recently, there have been significant flows in the Murray River due to flooding that began in North-Eastern Victoria. This interactive map shows you how full the reservoirs are. During this flooding, the forest we are supposed to be working in was flooded, as were many surrounding areas, and now there are pools of stagnant water all over the place. (This flooding also caused a black water event, which also means that in some backwaters there are piles of rotting fish all over the place, too.)

And so now there are mosquitoes.

I belive that there always ARE mosquitoes here at this time of year, but on my evening stroll today I was blown away by the number of them and the noise. As I walked along the river bank - probably not the smartest thing I could have done at twilight, truth be told - there were clouds and clouds of them. And you know that zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztzzzzzzzzzztzzzztzzzzzzzzzztzzzzzzzz sound they make? Well muliply that by about twelve million. And I'm not exaggerating. As I walked with the river to my left, there was a very distinct and high-pitched whining coming from the direction of the river. Where the path wound towards the river and (introduced) trees stood out, the clouds of mosquitoes came a little bit further inland.

Seeing all these clouds of mosquitoes, in fact, walking THROUGH these clouds of mosquitos with ne'er a nibble, seemed nothing short of a miracle. I assumed that it was because I hadn't stopped still, and perhaps there was some merit in that. But it did get me wondering about the Secret Life of Mosquitoes.

So here's five fun facts about mosquitoes!

1. The gents keep their probocuses to themselves - it is the ladies that bite, and even then, not all species will bite

2. Both males and females generally feed on plant sap and nectar (which would explain why they were hovering about the trees), but the females will seek out blood for its protein and iron before breeding

3. Mosquitoes lay eggs in water, which then develop into pupae and then larvae. This part of the life cycle lasts 10-14 days, and the adult stage lasts 1-2 weeks (although they can survive up to a month in captivity <-- I must say the concept of a mosquito in captivity utterly captivates me. No pun intended, by the way!)

4. Most mosquito species are crepuscular. Great word, huh?! It means dusk or dawn feeder, which explains why you generally only get bitten in the evening - because you're still snug as a bug at dawn (and they're probably a bit sluggish from the overnight cold), and most are having a siesta in the middle of the day. Except the Asian Tiger Mosquito. He sounds a bit scary...

5. Mosquitos find their host by detecting carbon dioxide, which all mammals exhale. They will exhibit more generalised feeding behaviour - casually zipping about the place - until they detect CO2, and then they go in for the kill. Or drink, as the case may be.

Now, for good measure, I looked up this Asian Tiger Mosquito, and as it turns out, THIS is the little bastard that is ALWAYS attacking me!!! Not the nice, sleepy brown ones, but the evil, zippy, stripey ones! Get him! GET HIM! *slap* *slap* *slap*

It makes you a bit itchy just looking at him, doesn't it...

On Travelling for Work

I am home this evening after four nights away for work. I travelled this week to Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin. For anyone who's not from around here, it's about 1500km to Alice, another 1500km to Darwin, and about a 650km round trip drive to Katherine from Darwin, which I did in a day as well as doing my work.

I haven't been truly homesick in more than two years living interstate, but this trip wore me down and I don't know why. I got to see Grant, which was fabulous. And I got to see my cousin Darren, who I haven't seen in ages, and also Grant's parents. But the monotony of fly-work-eat-work-hotel-sleep-eat-fly-work-eat (you get the picture) really started to get me down. I have no idea how people do this ALL THE TIME but there are people out there who do. People with families. I had only an empty house and a buttload of ironing to come home to, but I'd still prefer that to travelling for work.

Is it the lack of routine and stability? Is it the mould in the showers of hotels that cost $220 per night and really shouldn't have any mould in sight? Is it the continual eating out for dinner, buffet breakfast and whatever you are lucky enough to get hold of for lunch? Is it all the sitting around in airports, and having to make sure you've got everything you need? I never thought I was a creature of habit, but maybe I am after all. I enjoy sitting in our quiet little house in a quiet little street in quiet little Adelaide, doing little else with my weekends besides potter about the garden, doing the shopping, really being able to genuinely control what you eat, going for a walk and watching a movie or two. I'd enjoy that little routine in whatever city it happened to be in, as long as it was home.

Maybe it's because you're on a schedule when you travel for work, and you're a slave to it. Travel for holidays is one thing. I can - and have - packed up and moved every single day for a few months running, and whilst it is exhausting, it's all part of an adventure. You get to see the world, and the more you move on the more you see (although the opposite could be argued). But doing the same to earn a coin is just awful. Kudos to those who can hack it, but, unless I'm actually making a genuine positive contribution to something or someone by doing it, I just can't stomach it.

What do you guys think about travelling for work? What's your favourite bit? Your least favourite bit? Whilst it's kind of fun to have flights and car hire paid for, and have the lady at the hotel desk tell you the company is picking up your room service tab, and to arrive in your room of an evening to find that some kind soul has turned your bed down and placed a mint on your pillow, the novelty wears off rapidly. Or is that just li'l ol' homebody me?