I Made Two Cakes!

I’m normally not much of a baker, primarily because I would eat all of everything I made. Dave will have one cookie, or a tiny sliver of cake and be satisfied, leaving me to eat 15 cookies in a day. And I would do it. I’m not exaggerating.

Recently due to various circumstances I made two cakes. They turned out pretty well so I wanted to share them with you.

Over the past few years our friend Jake had often mentioned that he wanted a life sized statue of himself standing triumphantly atop the earth. I told him he should have a cake made in this image as a groom’s cake for their rehearsal dinner. This turned out to be prohibitively expensive to get from a cake maker, so ambitiously I said I could do it. I quickly ruled out the possibility of making Jake out of cake, but I figured I could make the earth. It’s actually kind of hard to do! you can find cake pans in the shape of castles, weird bumpy domes, bears, and flowers, but a simple sphere is rare. I finally decided I would just do half the earth and got Betty Crocker’s Bake ‘n Fill pan set. I made the half sphere and thought it seemed pretty sturdy, so I went ahead and made another one, stuck them together, frosted them up, printed out a picture of Jake standing triumphantly, glued it to some poster board, and viola!

This picture was taken by the wonderful wedding photographer, Soummya

The cake eventually wound up triumphantly all over Jake's face.

I suppose I will use this post as an opportunity to talk about Jake and Chrissy’s wedding, since according to my poll 4 of you wanted to hear about it. It was in Monterey at the Monterey Plaza Hotel. On Friday night after the rehearsal they had a great casino night featuring blackjack, pai gow, craps and pyramid dice. There was also a buffet which Peyton loved. He ate as much tortellini, gnocchi and duck as I did. That’s right, Peyton loves duck!

My mom was kind enough to come up to watch Peyton, and my sister and her boyfriend, Matt, were also in attendance so that was a huge help. The four of them stayed at a neighboring hotel so while Peyton was playing with them Dave and I were free to spend Saturday morning getting ready. From what I heard for the guys that meant watching TV in the hotel room and hanging out at the hotel bar and then, oh, yeah! I guess we should put our tuxes on! We ladies took a little more time and started the hair/makeup process in Chrissy’s room at 11. Jake and Chrissy also gave us some great attendant gifts. This summer Dave and Jake will be taking a class to get certified as level one sommeliers. Chrissy gave me a beautiful necklace/earring set and footie pajamas! We’ve been talking for awhile about how Peyton’s jammies are so cute, so this is not as odd as it may sound.

They had a beautiful ceremony and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. It was 70 degrees! Outside! On the coast! In January! Peyton did a great job as ring bearer. At the rehearsal he held the flower girl’s hand, but she was having none of it for the ceremony because she needed to throw her petals. So hopefully Jake and Chrissy didn’t mind that my sister acted as an impromptu ring bearer attendant. He turned the corner of the aisle and waved at all the people, said, “Hi!” then pointed up in the sky and said, “Bir!” This went over very well.

During the cocktail hour we had a great view of the moon rising, and it was huge!

Peyton stayed long enough to enjoy a few bites of chicken finger, but he was a little overwhelmed by the day so he headed back to the hotel with my mom. The rest of the evening was a ton of fun. We are all terrible dancers so the dancing was predominated by things like the sprinkler, the chainsaw, and the one where you’re pushing a grocery cart and pulling things off shelves. We also did “The Safety Dance,” which is not what many of you may be familiar with but is in fact a dance Jake made up many years ago that just involves randomly punching in various directions. He claims it’s the least safe dance. This then turned into people doing other less than safe dances, like running with scissors, swimming after eating, not wearing hardhats in construction zones, and living in the 14th century. Somehow we then all ended up doing a Robot Conga line to Flight of the Conchords’ The Humans are Dead.

The reception ended at 10 and the plan was to go hang out at the hotel bar afterwards. But when we went over there to our astonishment we were told they were cutting everyone off because there was a fight!  What happened was that there was a couple, not affiliated with the wedding, in the lobby. The guy was totally drunk and started beating on the girl! A friend of Jake’s saw this and tackled the guy to get him to stop. The police were called and they told the hotel they couldn’t serve any alcohol to anyone. Crazy!

So we decided to hit the streets of Monterey and found ourselves at Cannery Row Pizzeria and Karaoke Bar. It was so much fun! I’m not a singer, and as a matter of fact I don’t think anyone in our group was. But that didn’t stop us! Dave and I got things going with the most terrible rendition of Endless Love you’ve ever heard. I believe it included some spoken word and a few asides as to the fact that the singer did not, in fact, know the tune of the song. We had the whole place enthusiastically singing Enrique Iglesias and then Queen. I am sure Chrissy never imagined she would end up in a karaoke bar in a wedding dress, but it sure was fun.

I made a second cake! I saw this cake and thought I’d give it a try. (I did not use her fancy weight watcher’s recipe, I just used the plain box recipe.) This was conveniently the day before our friend Charlie’s 100 days birthday party, so I thought I’d bring it along. As it turned out this was fortuitous because they’d run out of time to make dessert! It turned out very pretty and was super easy!