Happy Retirement!

A couple of weeks ago a friend contacted me about making the retirement cake for the principal of my former school. They were hoping for a cake with a shoe on it and those just happen to be one of my favourite things to make.

My plan was to create a shoe box with a high heel shoe sitting on top. The colour scheme of the party was shades of purple.

In the winter months I use our balcony as a huge walk-in freezer. Unfortunately in the summer I don't have that luxury so it's harder to work on cakes in advance. 

This is the chaos that happens when I'm working on a cake.

So, on Tuesday night I started baking cakes and and sculpting them into the shape of a shoe box. This is the one area of cake decorating that I desperately want to be better at! I never feel like my cakes are as crisp and clean as I want them to be.

That same night I also constructed the shoe. This HAS to be done well in advance as it will take several days to dry. This is what I had done by the end of the evening.

You have to get creative, those are coasters propping up the bottom of the shoe.

Wednesday I had school till 8:30 then rushed home to finish up the cake. This is my favourite part! I love doing all the little details!!! This is when a cake finally starts to come together.

When I got the order I was told the cake would be for about 30 people. Now, there is a significant difference between how you cut a regular dessert cake and how you cut a cake for a special event or wedding. The pieces are much smaller! Even so, I felt like the cake would be a little small for their event. I ended up offering to include a dozen cupcakes. Then I found out their guest list had changed and now included closer to 90 people!!! 

So, one cake and two dozen cupcakes in the trunk of my car later I was off to school to drop off the cakes. Thank you so much Linwood for giving me this opportunity. Glad to hear Ms. S. was happy!