Makin' Cakes

Yesterday I left the house mid-morning to do a frantic rush for vacation supplies. After four hours of running around, my toes & nails were polished pink and I had found a bunch of cute dresses and beach clothes for our girls weekend in Miami. I'm still missing a few things, but all in all, vacay shopping success!

I got home earlier than expected, so after a salad lunch at home Matt, Riker and I went out to meet up with Matt's parents at Blackbeard's Cave, a local recreation center.

His aunt, uncle and cousin were visiting from North Carolina so it was fun to catch up with them. I wasn't really dressed for hitting baseballs, but the rest of the gang had fun in the batting cages.

We also had another reason for meeting up with the fam. I needed to drop off a cake.

A cake I actually made at a work event on Thursday. Pretty right? Every couple of months my office plans an outing for our team. Sometimes we just go out and have a fun dinner and other times we go to events or take a class together. This week our outing was to Make  Meaning to learn about cake decorating.

I have to admit, I thought it was a cute idea but I wasn't sure how I'd feel about cake decorating. I have a cake decorating set from my wedding gift registry five years ago, and honestly it has really never been used; it just sits in the way back of a cupboard getting dusty. Cake baking just isn't my forte (remember how ugly Matt's birthday cake was last year?). But it turned out to be really fun.

We arrived around 5:00 and were served wine and snacks, and then got a quick tutorial on fondant decorating. Then the "creative team" brought us each a small white cake along with piles and piles of decorating tools, fondants, frostings and candies for us to use. I felt like a little kid playing with edible playdough.

I decided to try my hand at fondant flowers, and picked out light yellows and blues for the palate. We used mini rolling pins to roll the fondant and then mold it into various shapes.

I didn't have much of a plan, but it all started to come together after a while.

I found some butterflies to stick on the side to go with the spring flower theme.

Final product!

Not too shabby if I don't say so myself. My coworkers had some really cute designs from polka dots to basket weaves to trees, Hawaiian flowers and dinosaurs.

Matt and I aren't really fans of fondant icing unfortunately, so while the cake was fun to make, I didn't care to eat it. MomMom, however, loves sugary baked goods so I gave the cake to her to enjoy.

I would definitely go back to Make Meaning, especially with kids for a fun kids party or family event. In addition to cakes, they do ceramics, jewelry and all kinds of other crafts. I think I just might have to try my hand at pottery soon!