Family Fun Cakes

I want to start this post by saying.............Sometimes I worry that I am passing my need to make sure that I have done things 100% perfect onto my kids - well maybe not the boys - but Andersen. Okay in some cases the boys too.....but with Andersen lately it is mostly her.

Here is a perfect example. We were having two of our grands over for a celebration of Andersen - she was being baptized at our church. However, it was also the Grands birthdays........so we thought it would be fun to celebrate them with a few cute cakes. I asked the kids "what" said Grandpa O to them and they said - Diet Coke!! I swear to goodness that I did NOT plant this idea in their heads, but I have been wanting to try to make a soda can. So we went with their idea and I carved the cake to look like a soda can - fondant over the top - and a tab to open it up........Tah Dah.....

I got it right? The only thing left to do was paint the fondant.........Now I wasn't sure how to make the fondant silver - and foolishly I hadn't searched it on any cake blogs - and even more foolishly I asked Dave's advise (who has totally said he is NOT the person who knows about cakes) and he said go with White Fondant and then paint it.............

Well just in case anyone follows this blog for TIPS - here is a TIP - make your fondant a light Grey if you are trying to create a silver color - THEN paint over it with some Silver luster dust or tint to make it look shiny silver. We made do though and in the end it was still doable. You learn by doing right? So totally cool right? Andersen painted this!!! Personally I think this is AWESOME!! Andersen however kept complaining that it didn't look great. That the word was crooked - that the swoop was wrong - that the circle around the register mark wasn't round - so many little things that were cool in my eyes. And I realized ....... I think I do that when I am creating a cake too.

I wish she could have seen it in the rest of our eyes - because what we saw was a giant edible Coke can done fabulously.......especially for an 11 year old!! Besides - the slightly wonky looking silver part of the cake was all my fault anyway for listening to Dave - who gave the wrong adivse so really it was his fault.........(this is how I divert responsibility in my head).

This cake was Lemon cake with Vanilla buttercream icing and a Vanilla fondant - total Yumminess - tastes like a lemon bar with icing..........yummo!!