My sister is on to something

My sister baked and decorated a beautiful cake for our mom's birthday. She had warned my mom that it looked bad. If this is her idea of a bad-looking cake, I'm not sure what a good-looking one would look like. I think she could go into a career of cake-decorating if she wanted to. (Her previous projects include my 2008 birthday cake.)

Happy Belated Birthday, Beth!

"Sophisti-cat" is ready to go home with you! She's come a long way since a week ago when I thought I could put her together in two hours while baking and frosting a cake.

If the dress she's wearing looks different than the one in the "before" photo, it's because it is. I thought I could make the dress out of some regular worsted-weight yarn, but the thicker yarn made it too big for the cat who was crocheted out of sport weight yarn.

I always wanted a clown cake

Once upon a time on the way home from what must've been 1st grade, I found this cake decorating book in the middle of the street. (or maybe along the curb-I was a good kid and wouldn't have been walking down the middle of the street.)

I'm not ashamed to admit it, I took it home and dreamed of someone making the clown cake for my birthday. The cakes pictured in the guide were so intricate-I didn't think it was possible for the everyday cake baker to make one of them anyway, even if it did say, "Beginner's Guide".

That book eventually got misplaced in our house, but in recent years that image of the clown cake came back to me, and thanks to the internets and the ebay, I was able to buy a very nice used copy for just a few bucks. That was probably 2 years ago, and I hadn't even seriously considered making anything from it. I think I just wanted to have the book for posterity's sake.

Fast forward to today, the final day of my weeklong birthday celebrations, when Corrie and I went to Omaha to have lunch with my mom and sister. When it was time for the cake, I could tell something fishy was going on, but I wasn't sure what it was. My mom brought my cake out from the bedroom, which I thought was odd, but that's because she was hiding MY OWN CLOWN CAKE! (Rookie blogger mistake-I didn't take my camera with me to Omaha, so I won't have a picture of the cake in its entirety until my mom gets her digital camera "developed". I don't know why she referred to it as "developed" when she really means "uploaded" or "downloaded". I suspect I may not see that photo for quite some time.) Here's what remains, which I was able to catch with my own camera here in Lincoln:


It really left me speechless, and for everyone who knows me, that's not easy to do. My sister had "borrowed without asking" (which I think is similar to stealing, however she did give the book back to me) my cake book when she was in town in January-I had no idea. This quarter of the cake doesn't do it justice-she replicated the cake perfectly. She even went to 4 different places to try to find the swirly suckers, unfortunately they couldn't be found. The gold cake platter even matched the cover! It suspiciously seemed like something I'd do! I'll have to get her back for her birthday-I know exactly what I'll make her, but it won't be a surprise because I couldn't keep my mouth shut (I can only be left speechless for so long)-I told her I'd make one of those doll cakes with the doll body sticking out, like I made for Beth a couple of years ago.

Hopefully, she'll still think it's pretty cool. If I could get one of her old Barbie dolls and use that for the doll, I think she'd be impressed. (Or creeped out.)