Cake Dreams and Dairy Denial

If you are a facebook friend (which I'm sure most of you are), then you saw Olivia's one year photo shoot preview.  We are really happy with how they turned out.  We are getting the disc of all of the pictures later this week, and I will certainly be sharing them on here with you all.

That's not what this post is about though.  This post is about CAKE!

I have watched my fair share of cake shows on The Food Network.  Everything from the challenges to the series.  I knew that I wanted a 3D owl cake for Olivia's party.  I have been on a mission to find the right baker for months now.

I finally found one a few months ago.  I sent her a description of what I was looking for, along with pictures from the internet.  I specifically said I did not want an abstract cake (as in one oval equals entire owl).  She sent me back an email and included a picture of the exact abstract cake I had in mind when I said I did not want abstract.  Ay yi yi.  We went back and forth a few times with ideas and then she just stopped responding to me!?!  Bizarre.

So I set out to find another baker.  People were either booked, their pictures looked terrible online and I wasn't confident in their abilities, or they sent back emails with no punctuation.  Yep.  I disqualified a guy because of his lack of proper punctuation and lack of a period at the end of his sentence.  Seriously.  This is your business!!! You can't punctuate properly?  Then I don't want you doing the details of my cake.

Then I found out Bronwen Weber was from Dallas! If you have watched any cake challenges, then you know who she is.  I think I first saw her about 5 years ago!  She is one of my favorites.  I figured...it's cake.  I mean, I know a 3D cake is expensive, but it's flour and water and eggs... how expensive can it really be?!  So I called.  Um...$12 a person!!!!!!  Holy freaking cow! What?  Plus $75 for delivery.  Yeah.  I guess you can charge that much when you are a Food Network Star.  Obviously some people pay. Not this girl!

I finally found someone.  I have no idea how the cake is going to look, but I'm hoping and praying for the best.  I will be seriously bummed if it is not what I am envisioning.  Even this lady had a problem returning phone calls.  I joked with Michael that I should start a cake business.  I'm not a great baker.  I'm not a cake decorator.  But I CAN return phone calls and emails--that immediately puts me a leg above the rest!

On to the other cake.  We did cake smash pictures as part of Olivia's one year photo shoot.  I was all excited to have found the perfect cake on the day of.  It matched my purple and yellow theme and was just the right size.  The whole entire photo shoot was an hour, so it was probably 40 minutes in when we went to do the cake smash.  The frosting had completely melted! :(  I mean completely.  I used my finger and tried to cover it the best I can.  Then our photographer did some nice editing to try to cover the issue. Darn Texas heat!

Olivia wasn't bothered by the droopy frosting.  She was slow at first, but then she went to town.  I had no doubt that she would.  That girl loves to eat! :)  She ate a TON too. We finally cut her off after 65 pictures and 3/4 of a cake later.  She probably would have eaten the whole thing!

Unfortunately, we paid for the store-bought-off-the-shelf-with-buttercream frosting cake later.  We paid at 11:30 when Olivia woke up in pain from gas.  Ugh.  Sometimes I'm in denial about her issues.  I really thought that she would grow out of it within a year.  Plus, usually her symptoms aren't that bad.  So sometimes I let things slide more than maybe I should.  She's never had that much at one time though.  Now we know.  It isn't good.  She had a not so pretty diaper the next day too.  Sometimes I like to tell myself that the doctor was just being overly cautious when she said no dairy for a year, but the truth is, that is probably our reality.  Thankfully, our baker is making Olivia's party smash cake dairy free.  Poor girl.