Monday, June 05, 2006

Worth a Thousand Words...

I learned a very important lesson last weekend over the value of visual images in communication.

I threw a baby shower for a dear friend last Saturday afternoon. I ordered a cake from my favorite bakery and described over the phone what I wanted. A couple of weeks prior to ordering this cake, the same bakery had made the cake below for a coworker/friend of mine and I mentioned that. The man taking my order said he remembered the cake and they could do it again, no problem.

Here was my friend/coworker's cake -
















and here is what I ended up with -















Yes, ladies & gents, that is a giant baby head growing out of the lower right-hand corner of the cake. YIKES! I lied when I picked it up and the baker showed it to me, "OH, that's cute!" I hope my facial expression did not give away the fact that I was, indeed, horrified.

Fortunately, I know a little bit about fashioning 3-D babies from fondant (though I swear I could have used Fimo clay and no one would have known, as the baby I made ended up in the trash can after the shower...I mean, who really LIKES to eat fondant?!), so I was able to rescue the cake and restore it to a likeness of my original vision.



Oh, and in case you're wondering...yes, I did eat the baby head. But by the time I managed to remove it from the cake, it no longer resembled a head. No, as I was removing it, it fell apart (could have had something to do with the not-so-strategic places I had stuck two forks to try and lift the head off the cake), so by the time it made it to the plate, it was a heap of cake and frosting in no recognizable form. However, I am still quite thankful that the head was not made from red velvet cake.

5 comments:

headlesschickie said...

WOW!.... WOW!

You played that off so well at the shower. I would have wanted to spill the whole story. Actually, I guess you did mention that it was too long a story.

From the picture, I thought the giant baby head was fondant too! Which is gross, but then I mean, what woman, much less pregnant woman would want to eat a baby head shaped piece of cake. Or cut it! That bakery worker must be on crack!!!

Great save!!!! And I didn't notice at the shower that it just said Anna, so no harm done.

Several friends/guests commented on what a lovely, fun shower it was. Great job. Erin and I will have to pay you back eventually!

By the way, my sister notified of this post. She thought the cake comparison was VERY HI-LARIOUS.

Ladybug said...

Girl, I did want to spill the story but I figured I'd just wait and include all of the pictures for the full impact.

No, the giant baby head was vanilla cake. And very yummy vanilla cake at that. I'll probably be a bad mom for having been willing to eat a baby head made of cake, but hey, it didn't LOOK like anything when I started shoveling it from the plate to my mouth.

Ok, sorry about that - I'm not sure why I thought you'd just call her Anna and Grace was her middle name. Anna Grace has such a lovely ring to it.

Yay! I'm glad they had fun! I love entertaining, don't know if you could tell. :-)

I'm glad Nancy was amused! I got (and still get) a good laugh out of it.

Flawed And Disorderly said...

Oh my gosh! What an awesome job you did on the cake!! I'm so impressed!!! I've never ordered a cake that came out as planned, but I usually just cry or cuss at the baker. I don't have the skills to redecorate or even write across a cake! I don't even know what fondant is--is that the fake icing stuff? I'd never seen anything so weird until I ordered Alex's b-day cake and it had some weird stuff on it that wasn't really edible. If it wasn't fondant, it should have been called fondant.

I forgot you were throwing Adri a shower. I guess I didn't commit that to memory since I couldn't be there. Good to know about Anna Grace's name. I didn't know that either.

And why in the world was I not notified about your cooking blog??? I can't wait to try some of those things!!!!!

Ladybug said...

You know, I'm not exactly sure what fondant is, either. It's like marzipan, which I think is almond paste or includes almond paste or something. Most people don't like to eat it. I include myself in that group.

The recipe blog's brand-new - it was just created last night and it's the brainchild of one of the groupies on the local wedding message board at theknot.com that I still visit from time to time for some odd reason.

headlesschickie said...

Ok, I just showed my mom these pictures and we were crying, laughing so hard. Pleeeeaaaase include them in any pictures you give me (as you probably noticed, I didn't even bother to bring my camara. Mainly that's because I don't love pictures of myself at this point.)

I literally start laughing in the middle of the day just thinking about "yes ladies and gents, that is a giant baby head..."

Sooooo funny!