Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Birthday ala Zieger

I love the Zieger family. Mom and the two boys are awesome, and I love doing cakes for them.


Exhibit #1: Birthday at Zieger Field
Ben loves baseball, and after talking it over with his mom, we came up with this. The diamond is regulation size (to scale), and I tried to replicate the criss-cross mowing pattern in the "grass".
I attempted to duplicate the Wrigley Field score board, substituting his name on the board. I also scored the home team with his age (13).
Ben's mom also loaned me a picture of Ben in full baseball garb which I transferred to the cake in black icing as an overlay on the field.

When we met to transfer the cake over for his birthday she brought Ben with her, and I wasn't even sure if he liked it. He just nodded and left. She told me later that after we were out of sight, he grinned from ear to ear raving about how much he loved it, but asking his mom if he acted "cool". I guess it's a teenager thing.

An unusual occurrence happened during the construction of this cake... I goofed on the icing. I pulled chocolate and (what I thought was) regular butter cream out of my freezer, but as it turned out, I had thawed the pre-made batch of cordial cream filling (where all I had to do was add confectioner's sugar to make it thick). I couldn't figure out why the icing was so thin and sticky. It dawned on me after I found the faded label on the side that this was the marshmallow and butter starter for the cream. I learned 2 very important lessons that day: 1. always mark your containers with permanent marker and 2. the marshmallow cream and butter starter mixed with chocolate butter cream made a very tasty icing. I'll have to try to replicate my mistake later for future use.

Exhibit #2: Martinsburg Madness
I am an alumnus of Martinsburg High School, and Zay plays football there. Who knew cake carving would come in handy? It took me some research before I found a helmet that resembled the team's the best. It took a LOT of dye to get that bright orange color, too!As much as he loves football, he's more into street hockey now, and wants that for his next birthday cake. We'll have to wait and see what Ben has in mind for his.

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