Happy Halloween!

Why hello Mr Pumpkin, how are you today?


My goodness. You're not looking well at all, How about we remove some of that excess?


What, you felt okay to begin with? No need to make faces.


This is the Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) pumpkin I carved and then mailed to The Amazing Lauren. That's right, at some point in the last couple of days, one of my friends received a pre-carved pumpkin. I am currently accepting applications to be my friend, but the requirements are strict. You need to be a minimum of half as awesome as me.

Oh, also, she got a cake.

You can't tell in the picture, but that is a four inch tall seven-layer cake. I told her to take pictures when she ate it, I will update accordingly.

I, unfortunately, have no reason to dress up for Halloween. I am not currently working (house remodeling is taking precedence), not attending school and no one I know is having a party. To combat this, I will have a party later this year and it will involve costumes. Anyway, since you don't get to see me dressed up in a costume (and since looking at my computer I see that I have no previous Halloween pictures [what's up with that?]), have this instead.

Senior year, high school drama production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I played Hippolyta. I was deemed a natural queen. Thank you, thank you.

Note: Faces have been blurred to protect the innocent.

Chauvet Caves

Back in my college days, I lived in a dorm as so many do. Being an RA (yes, I'm a total goody-two-shoes at heart), I also had the privilege of my own room - which I proceeded to decorate.


Being the kind of nerd I am, I avoided the 'favorite sports team' and/or 'favorite band' themes for something decidedly more cerebral.


The Chauvet Caves were my inspiration, although my artistic abilities were not on par with the original creators. (And how sad is it that I am not as good an artist as a palaeolithic painter?) All of the works were created on plain white paper, then taped up on the walls. I have to admit it was a surreal experience. You could actually see a portion of my walls from the main school grounds if you were looking and I had several people ask me what the heck was going on up there - many of them unaware it was in fact my dorm.


I make no apologies for the follies of youth and say this with utmost certainty, I would totally decorate a room of my house like this if I ever, you know, own a house. It would the Chauvet guest bedroom, all done up in earth tones with a starlight ceiling instead of an overhead lamp.

Oh man, I need to go write this down somewhere - other than online that is...

You will be assimilated

[Before anyone says anything: yes I have a lot of time on my hands. I work swing shift, so on my days off, I have very little to do between about 2am and 5 or so when I go to bed.]

I began a project back in May. I say began, I bought the materials for a project back in May, actually started it in June and finished it last Friday. Even that’s misleading. I began and finished my end of the project one week at then end of June, I then had to wait for help with the laser which didn’t get finished until late July.

What’s that? Yeah, there’s a laser involved. Did I mention that this project was awesome?

Meet 2 of 3.

He’s a little shy around strangers, enjoys warm fires, puppies, assimilating lower life forms, and pasta. Also, he’s a Teddy Borg.

Resistance is futile.

Making a Teddy Borg is not as easy as one might seem, nor is the going unfraught with peril.

But with a few feet of black vinyl, some cord, a willingness to dismantle a laser pointer and a guinea-bear you too could have your very own Teddy Borg.

(Note: I do know that some students at MIT made one with a wireless connection that was pretty cool; but I don’t attend MIT. In fact, I took off three years between school and grad school. Techno-geek I am not. This bear was made to the best of my abilities and it does rather rawk. Actually, to the best of my abilities and I could rather have made it wireless if I’d really wanted. But seriously, is it not creepy enough as it is? Can you imagine if you could turn it on from half a world away?)

So some directions, should you desire a Teddy Borg of your very own:

Easiest way to make the suit, hands down, is to open up the back of the bear, pull out his stuffing, and turn him inside out. This will make you feel like a very bad person. From there, you can see the edges of the panels needed and can create a pattern. I went through a few different incarnations of the suit before I found the one that worked.

The face, well.. I tried it two different ways. One was to pull all the stuffing out of his head and sew it that way. That’s how the finger injury above happened. This is also how 1 of 3 was made. The other way is to just use a double back loop while sewing which I can’t describe but actually works quite well. This is how 2 of 3 was made. I do believe he turned out better (and he is the one featured in the finished photos). He is the also the one gifted to The Amazing Lauren.

The laser, well... we broke a few in this process. What, we? Yes, I do not currently own a soldering iron. Of my many projects, I do not have the required tools to solder a laser. My geekitude only extends so far.

So 1 of 3 and 2 of 3 are complete. In fact, this is 2 of 3 and (future) 3 of 3 together.

They started so cute I actually felt a little bad. Only a little though.

We are the Borg, resistance is futile.

Tauren Cat Cake

Oh-Em-Gee. That was both easier and significantly more difficult than I thought it was going to be. And the final product? Lordy, he’s cute.

(For the back story and Stumpy head thataways.)

To start with on Tuesday morning I made my own buttercream icing but since I’m never going to do that again you get no pictures. Okay, here, you can have one.

This was way more trouble than it’s worth as I used two sticks of butter, a pound of powdered sugar, half and half, and a lot of time to get half the amount you can buy from Betty Crocker for a buck fifty. I’m all for homemade, but seriously, where’s the sense in expending a lot more effort, time and money to get half the product? None, that’s what I say.

The shaping of the Tauren-Cat was actually pretty easy. Even though you can’t see it, the bottom layer actually came out of the pan in about three pieces. But it’s the bottom layer so plbbt! Who’s going to know?

Here’s what Tauren-Cat looked like all shaped up. Notice the clever use of cupcakes to fill in at his neck and to make his tail. Go ahead, notice.

Dear Lord, isn’t he cute? That round little nose is going to be my undoing. When we start eating him, I’m going for the snout.

I had to protect him overnight on Tuesday since I wasn’t going to put on the fondant until Wednesday (today?). There was nothing for the cling film to stick to so I held it down with virtually my entire spice collection. If you ever wondered what my spice cabinet had in it, here’s your chance.

And this was what was left.

From forty cakes to four. Jeez.

Next morning came time to ice. I had bought three containers of buttercream icing, and they covered approximately 85% of the cake.

Of course, I had to do what I was trying so hard not to through very careful planning. I had to go out and get more. I bought two more containers of frosting but only ended up using half of one. The other is spare, I’m sure I’ll use it eventually for something or other.

And here he is all iced up and super-cute.

Next, came fondant. I’d show you how I colored it but I wasn’t about to go picking up my camera with food coloring all over my hands. Just imagine the most strenuous kneading process you can imagine and go with that. But with color. Next, you roll out the fondant. I’d heard to use cornstarch to keep the fondant from sticking, but I used powdered sugar which worked fine and was yummier.

They sell a special rolling pin for this, but I used this one I got a buck at Christmas. As long as there’s no seam on it, it’ll be fine.

Also, I broke the cardinal rule of cake decorating. I covered him in pieces. Ordinarily, you should roll out one big sheet and lay it over the cake, then trim off any excess. But look at him, He’s all funny shaped. So I did the head, legs and tail separate.

There were some flaws mainly around the neck, but I knew no one would see the neck area so I didn’t sweat it too much.

Then came more coloring, so no intermediary pictures again (Sorry!), but the mane was made by starting halfway down his back and gluing down triangles of brown fondant. To ‘glue’ down fondant, just mix up a little bit of gumpaste in some water and the stuff will stick like you were using super-glue.

And here is he 98% complete. (He still needs his horns)

Hey! We haven’t heard from Stumpy in a while, let’s check in shall we?

In the last few days, Stumpy has gotten some detail work done. His loincloth is snazzier and he can see now, so that’s good.

But what you really want to see isn’t Stumpy, it’s the final Tauren-Cat. I’ll finish off with the picture but I want to say this, if I had a better eye for detail and wasn’t so prone to losing my patience the cake would have been a piece of… well… cake. I’d totally do it again, and I learned things.

1. Own a paintbrush to use in the kitchen. This is for dusting powdered sugar off of fondant, or any number of other uses, but that one springs to mind.

2. Fondant is not so difficult to work with as one might think. Seriously, once I got the hang of rolling it, it was a cinch.

3. I am the coolest friend ever. We all already knew that, but I totally am.

Remember what we started with? Let’s do a before and after like they do on reality shows.

Before:

After:

Update: R liked his cake, although I forgot he was on a diet so probably not so much with the eating. The SO was very impressed, thus not a total wash. Also, Stumpy's arm fell off as we were leaving the house. Also also, I got a job offer for a pastry chef position from someone at the restaurant. But with very little pay and very early hours so that's a no. Yet very cool.

Deep Breaths

Over the course of the next couple of days I will be attempting to turn this...


Into one of these...


Those of you who are of a religious inclination, pray for me.

(I will be posting about the process, but probably in stages as Holy *Shark* this is going to be interesting)

Creating Life

My skills tend to be somewhat less than I believe they are. I over-estimate my baking prowess. While I can make a decent cake / cookie / pie, when it comes to gussying it up I fall flat.

So why am I cursing at a package of gumpaste at 11 o’clock on a Saturday night?

Because I’m a good friend, and a friend’s birthday is fast approaching. I had originally planned on cookies and the thought was to make World of Warcraft the theme. This was before the Valentine’s Day cookie debacle (of which there were no survivors). Since it turns out I can’t decorate a heart, I almost immediately had second thoughts about an army of edible Taurens and Night Elves. But R is a good friend and he needed something awesome. And something awesome is what he shall have.

It was time to make my creative side for a road test.

I knew what I wanted to do for the cake (more on that later), but I also wanted something supercool as a side decoration. To distract from the cake if necessary. Something the likes of which the world has never seen. Something like… an edible version of R’s World of Warcraft character.

Let’s take a sidetrip here for a second – R’s character is called a Tauren. It’s a little like a minotaur and looks something like this.

R’s specifically looks like this.

Don’t say I’m not ambitious.

Has anyone ever heard of gumpaste? It’s about twice as appetising as it sounds (which is admittedly not much) and if you’ve ever been to a wedding chances are at least part of the cake’s decorations were made of the stuff. It’s rather like edible modelling clay (parents take note!). You can dye it to whatever colour you like, although you’ll get carpal-tunnel trying to knead in a dark colour. And I don’t care how many times I’m told you can create a decent brown using other colours, invest in a bottle of the stuff. Much like having black on hand – this will save you heartbreak down the line. Gumpaste looks like this out of the package.

And then it looked like this.



It's alive. Alive!

Since it was midnight before I got the hang of this and nearly one before I finished I have no intermediary pictures. My bad. But this is what it looks like 75% done – 75% because next week I’m going to break out the food pens and and give him so minor details. Like eyes.

Gumpaste is a little tough to work with at first but becomes much easier as you knead and work with it. Almost too easy. The poor Tauren’s legs shortened quite a bit as I tried to stand him up to dry out. I think I’ll call you Stumpy.

He’s missing something though…
Got it, every Tauren worth his horns needs an axe.

And tell me that nose ring doesn't rock your socks.