Baby One Month Celebration and A Birthday, And 25th Wedding Celebration

I decided to combine these two cakes in one post mainly because they have similarities in terms the disaster I was facing when making them :).

Remember my newest niece? She turned one month on August 25th (yup, this post is long overdue). It may not be a big deal for most of you, but in our tradition, we celebrate this special occasion. I think (I might be wrong) babies are still weak in that one month period since they still rely on the mother's immune system. They shouldn't leave the house during this one month due to the exposure to a lot of viruses. a lot of families would trim the baby's hair completely to let go anything that he/she carried from the womb, or something like that. It is also the time when you can cut the fingernail of the baby.

The one month celebration coincidentally falls on the same day as the mother's birthday, how awesome is that! They threw a party of 60 people to celebrate this special occasion and what is a celebration without a cake!

It was sorta last minute when the request for the cake came, and it took me quite a while to figure out how to incorporate the two theme into one cake. I browsed though A LOT of baby's cake pictures until finally decided on one I like. It was a three-tiered cake with pink and brown color combo, one of my favorites. I decided to just put a figurine of a mother holding a baby, which my friend, N, helped out with (Thanks!). She stayed for 4 hours until midnight to make the figurine while I was busy with the cake, fill, frost, cover, etc. It was a crazy crazy time, not to mention that it was on a weekday too!

We didn't really need a three-tiered cake to feed 60 people but we decided to do so anyway because it looks better with the color contrast. I made the second tier from dummy so that we won't end up with lots of leftover. The cake was a basic vanilla cotton cake, layered with fragrant blueberry preserve, and very cheesy cream cheese frosting.

I had to mention though, that San Jose was in the middle of a heat wave during the 3-4 days I started making the cake and to the actual celebration day itself. We do have AC (Thank God) but it wasn't enough to keep the house cold. It was quite a disaster as for some reason, the fondant I used to cover the middle tier cracked everytime I put it on the cake and I had to re-do it 6x before I finally decided to start with a new fondant (talking about being stubborn)!!! I don't think my wrist was functional after the 6th time, it was very exhausting and I think my wrist was about to crack anytime. Everything seemed ok that night, except that our fridge won't fit the 6" cake in, so I put it on the dining table unrefrigerated overnight, thinking that the weather at night and in the morning should be cool enough to keep the frosting in place. Oh, how I was so wrong. The next morning when I came down to check, the 6" layer was a disaster! The frosting went soft because it was too hot, making the cake very poor-looking. Oh yes, I almost cried that time, believe me. I almost didn't want to post this cake in this blog, as I don't want to be reminded of this nightmare but oh well, not everything always go smoothly and there's always a lesson to learn.

Other than the cake, I had to cook the Indonesian yellow rice and also a side dish. I don't know how, but somehow we managed to get them all done , just 30mnts late, which is a surprise really considering it was a weekday. But yeah, the cake went soft very quickly due to the hot weather, not to mention it had to stand outside on the table for a few hours before it was cut. It was messy but everyone doesn't seem to care or mind the appearance, fortunately :)

There was a lot of REALLY good food in the party, it was as authentic Indonesian as you can get here in the US, yumm!!

Speaking about making a cake during a heat wave, it happened to me once before, a few months ago. This cake was in my folder was so long and I never intended to post it, but since this other cake gets posted, it doesn't seem fair if I keep the previous one in the back. It was for a 25th wedding anniversary cake. I tried my best to keep it cool and perfect but it was so hot (100-ish), my AC was broken at that time, and the fridge was so full (bad combination). Despite all these imperfections, thankfully they still appreciated it and the cake still tasted good, which what matters the most really.

The 25th wedding anniversary celebration was held in their beautiful home, just checkout the landscape in the back! They set up tables in the backyard and put the food in the gazebo, it was truly beautiful. The flower topper for the cake is peony, back in the Spring when Peony was in season. Yes, it was that long ago and I'm too embarrassed to post this. See that wrinkles and unsmooth-ness of the fondant? It was similar to the baby and birthday celebration cake, the frosting gets really soft and it doesn't matter how much I tried to smooth it out, it won't be perfect :(. But there it is now, I'm showing it to the world. The wedding celebration cake has Swarovsky crystal on the cake, which makes the cake looked a little sparkly when the light hits it, but I don't think the pictures are doing it any justice.

I just bought a refrigerator a few months ago, but hasn't been used yet. It has fridge for times like this, and also freezer to stock all of the berries for Winter time, so I hope I learn enough not to let this incident from happening again.