American Girl: Sofia

Sometimes when I'm in the middle of a mistake, I wish I would take a picture of it.  But, the panic is so horrendous that I just want to get out of it so I keep working and working and trying to fix it.  And it always (luckily) turns out okay.  But I wish I had the photographic evidence to support the mistake I made.  Sometimes I get a kid's name wrong on the cake.  Yes.  That has happened.  All but one time I fixed it before the client saw it because I check and double-check and sometimes triple-check the spellings.  

Sometimes I'm about to put the wrong filling in the cake.  Again, a double-check of an email is so beneficial to me.  You see, I'm usually working on my cakes late into the evening.  When my brain is often not completely "on" but tranquil.  Often times I'm heading to bed after 2:00 a.m. because cakes take THAT long to make and decorate.  And the easier the cake looks, the harder it is.  I keep forgetting that though.  

Why am I talking about my mistakes in this blog?  Because this is one that could have been VERY bad, but I fixed it in the wee hours of the night.  Amy requested an American Girl Doll Box cake for her daughter Sofia (who had Kit).  She was having a very American Girl birthday party and wanted a corresponding cake to go with it.  She showed me what she wanted with a picture on her phone and I thought it looked do-able.   (I had the Academy Awards party this last weekend too, but I could certainly squeak this in...she booked me back in October for heaven's sake!)  I was always comforted by the fact that I had Josie's American Girl Doll box to refer to in my hour of need. 

So, I  started working on Sofia's cake.  It was baked, filled and crumb coated and now it was time to work on the frostings.  I brought up Josie's doll box and began making the most beautiful frostings.  Seriously, I wish I had pictures, because I had the frosting PERFECTLY matched to the lavender and hot pink.  Perfection.  I started frosting the cake and then around the 12:30 hour, I started to feel funny about it.  

Hmmm.  This didn't look right.  It should because the colors matched PERFECTLY, but still.  Something was nagging me.  It doesn't look right.  Now, Amy never sent over a picture of what she wanted; she showed me what she wanted on her phone.  But I still decided to do a search for Kit's American Girl Doll Box and up came this image.  Over and over again.  Look at it.  It looks nothing like my daughter's.  [Insert PANIC here.]

Okay.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Stores are all closed.  I can't make any more frosting.  Supplies have been depleted.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.  I don't think I have any more red food coloring.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Her party, which was originally scheduled for Sunday, was changed to Saturday.  I don't have that "extra" day.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.  

It's going to be okay.  

Here's where I wish I took pictures of the before cake.  Because you wouldn't have believed the awesome colors I had.  But as I remembered, Josie had a "MY American Girl Doll" and Sofia's was a Historical Doll.  They had different boxes.  Ugh.   Well, I had to to the best I could to fix this.

By some sort of miracle, I found a totally new, unopened bottle of red food coloring in my cake decorating drawer (which is not where it should be, and I don't even know why I was looking there.  Let's give some credit to St. Anthony, shall we?)    So I mixed the lavender and the pink colors that I had already made together and added a lot of red to the mix to come up with the PERFECT shade of red for this cake.  I almost cried because this was surely a miracle.  I was able to get the rest of the cake frosted and decorated and then I added the last detail.  The "doll's" face.  Amy was able to go to our local grocery store's bakery and get a sheet of edible frosting printed with her daughter's face on it.  Sofia's face is actually frosting!  Completely edible!  How cool was that?!

So there's my journey with this cake.  Provided to you in way too much detail than you ever cared to read about.  (Thanks for making it this far!!!)  Most cakes have some level of panic built in to them.  I'm sure most cake decorators can tell you that.  The easier the cake looks, the harder it usually is too.  I have to remember this!

But for Sofia, this was all worth it.  She's a dear little girl and cute friend to my Josie.  I hope she had a wonderful 7th birthday this weekend!