Where did my infant go?

Curse you fondant!

Monday was my husband's 50th birthday. He was not at all happy about hitting this magic number, and really didn't want anyone to pay much attention to it. So I kept things very low key and we had a celebration with just our tiny family (although I did have his picture placed on the front page of the paper I work for, but only 10,000 people see that... I may have stretched "low key" just a bit).

Last month he had hinted about me doing another Van Halen themed cake, and specifically mentioned Eddie Van Halen's white Frankenstein guitar.  I had been looking for inspiration online and even went to a good friend for ideas.  My friend is quite the artist when it comes to cakes, and she showed me a partial guitar she had done with just frosting.  She described it as "simple," but what is simple for her would look like I did it with my feet if I had tried it. So I settled on molding a guitar body out of fondant and doing an "artistic" interpretation of the a fore mentioned guitar.

My husband used to work for the Fender Custom Shop while living in California, and it just so happens that he has unfinished guitar stock hanging in his man room (we call it The Pirates Club). I placed one that closely resembled the Frankenstein on a sheet of wax paper and traced it. Next I rolled out the fondant and spent the next hour rolling and shaping it until I got it as close to the real thing as I could. I had baked an 11x17 french vanilla cake and frosted it with the orange cream-sickle icing my daughter had chosen. I had the neck piece shaped (although I couldn't get the color that I really wanted) and decided I would go ahead and put the body piece on before I went any further.

It was all going so smoothly....

I had let the fondant set out for a bit in the hopes that it would harden and stiffen. That did not happen. As I tried to lift and move the fondant it began to stretch and in my panic I was not as careful as I should have been and the fondant flipped onto the cake on the wrong side. This in turn caused the icing to adhere to the fondant and pull away from the cake and... I can't go on because it just causes flashbacks that I'm not ready to relive.

I had just two choices: fix it as best as I could, or just give up.  If you aren't aware of the price of fondant, let's just say knowing how much you shelled out for it will prompt you to press forward.  I pipped black icing on in the design pattern of the Frankenstein to the best of my abilities. Once I placed the neck on I realized there was just no way to save it because the dimensions were very off, and my skill level is not at the point of knowing what to do.  So I molded and painted a few more pieces and just finished it as best as I could.

I then covered it and waited for the birthday boy to get home.

When he saw it he went wild, and even praised me on working his initials (TH) into the design. I whipped my head around to see what he was talking about and then saw it. I told him that I wanted his cake to be special, and then wondered to myself how I manged to do that without consciously doing it :)

So, he loved his cake. As for me I don't like the way it turned out and have vowed never to use fondant (other than molding smaller figures) ever again. Plus, I don't enjoy the taste of fondant and as it turns out neither did anyone else in my house!

This exercise in futility has also prompted me to practice more because I have lived my entire life under the assumption that if I couldn't do something perfectly the first time I did it, then I didn't want anything to do with it ever again.

However, cake inspires me to keep going.  If for no other reason than the fact I can eat the mistakes!

We all have our quirks. The need for instant perfection has always been mine...okay, maybe not my only one.

This is also the second year in a row that the poor guy had his birthday presents wrapped in Christmas paper. Thank goodness he is easy going.