Sunday, April 18, 2010

This cake request had me stumped!

Last week a co-worker asked me to make a cake for her daughter's birthday.  This is how the conversation went...

Me:  "Sure, what did you have in mind?" 
Her:  "Chocolate cake with strawberry filling."
Me:  (Thinking... easy enough.)  "And the design?"
Her:  Well her handle is strawberry kitten.  And she likes the colors blue and silver."
Me:  (blank stare)  "Hmm"  Do you mean a pink kitten?"
Her:  "No, maybe some chocolate covered strawberries on top and if you can find a picture of a cat."
Me:  (What have I gotten myself into?!)  "Ok, let me see what I can come up with."

Now what do I do with blue, silver, chocolate covered strawberries and a cat?!  I thought maybe I can get her to go more of a gourmet route because her daughter was turning 18.  So I showed her a photo of a cake surrounded by pirouette cookies and the top was filled with chocolate covered strawberries.  Very cool.  But she said no.  She then showed me photos of savannah cats.  Wow, they are really neat looking animals but I can't do anything like that with less than a weeks notice.  And I mention that silver is not an easy color to do with buttercream.  I'm thinking maybe cover the strawberries with white chocolate and drizzle with blue chocolate to make it fit better, but she says her daughter loves dark chocolate.  So we decided on blue buttercream with a few chocolate covered strawberries on top.  I said OK and walked away saying to myself "I just don't see how I am going to make this look good." 

I decided to add some white buttercream to the design, it's not silver but it will have to do.  So as I'm putting this cake together I am still stumped.  This is what I came up with...


In the end I think it turned out OK and Elaine loved her cake.