Cake-opalooza!

Monday and Tuesday were the team cake project days, with Legolas and I once again working together. Monday went well enough as we made tons of roses, rose buds and leaves (I did all the buds, he did all the leaves and we split the roses between us) and enrobed our three-tier cake in light blue fondant.

Tuesday morning was rough as we disagreed over the rest of the fondant colors (when we’d initially agreed on "light blue background with graphics made of white and shades of blue," I interpreted that as one blue in different degrees of depth. Legolas interpreted it as one purplish-blue, one green-blue, one periwinkle, etc). We had a spat and didn’t talk to each other for an hour or so, but it was a quiet spat so I don’t think Chef even noticed.

We were supposed to do a fondant band border on the bottom of the big tier, but as Legolas started it, he said he couldn’t get the ribbon all around without ripping it so he put it on the middle tier instead. That irked me a bit, since we had to have a bottom border of some kind, but I just kept cutting out the circle graphics. Cut, cut, cut, with all these leftover dots...

Hey, wait a minute...

I suggested we save the little cut-outs and make confetti of them and make that the bottom border. This was a turning point for the cake and for The Spat. Once we started getting the graphics onto the fondant, Legolas was happier and so was I.

Here’s a post-spat shot of the oft-mentioned Legolas, looking like a man who really shouldn’t be around sharp knives:

And hey! Here’s a shot of the finished cake. Chef’s only comment was: "The confetti is a nice surprise. I like it."

And this, by the way, is a shot of the cake design Chef gave Legolas and I originally. She decided to give it to the team that was struggling a bit, and reduce it to three tiers instead of four as she’d planned for us. Seeing our cake, which I think reflected both our styles, can you even imagine Legolas and I trying to do this dainty l’il thing??

And here’s a lineup of all our class cakes. I think everyone did a great job, actually, and several chefs walking past (the day we put our team cakes in the window attracts a bit of a crowd) said these were overall the nicest group in a long time. As I was editing this photo, I realized that two of the other teams did exactly the photo Chef gave them, and two did the exact same design as their photo but in different colors.

Only Legolas and I, Team Color Fiend, talked Chef into letting us change the colors, the flowers (the original photo had weird orchidy things) and even the graphic (the photo had just circles, rings and bulls-eyes of fondant, not our retro shagadelic nuttiness). And then there’s the confetti. Hey, I think it works.

And I have confirmation other people think it works... today, for Grand Buffet, they pick two cakes to take down to the dining hall to use as showpieces. Team Color Fiend’s was one of them.