Tony is very special friend of my. I remembered the first time I met him which was 13 years ago, he came to our house with his wife, he gave me a such warm hug and kisses. He said to Victor: "I just love this girl." "Marry me." He said to me. I said: "I am married." "Remember to call me when you got divorced." Then we all laughed. Since then he became my special "boy friend". He loves birds. Every time I meet him, he talks about his birds. Today is his birthday, I want to make a special cake for him.
I started to design this cake last week: an angel bird with a bird's cage. The first cage I designed was round. I tried to pipe royal icing on a greased balloon. The next day when I took the balloon off from royal icing, it explored, meanwhile, the cage became pieces. It didn't work. Then I drew a square cage. It didn't look good. In the end it became the one in the picture.
I piped all designs on wax papers. Left them dry over night. Sunday night, Victor and I tried to assemble the cage. The sides were easy, it didn't take long to put them together. When we did the roof, the problems began. No matter how we did, it just didn't work. Victor said: my roof design was fraud, there is no structure, and my royal icing roof pieces are too fragile. On Monday, I made another kind of roof, it failed again. I was so disappointed. I decided to put the roof aside, started working on assembling the cake.
I made 3 cakes: 2 classic chocolate cakes and 1 vanilla cake. As planed, I put one layer chocolate on the bottom, on top of that is whip-cream; then vanilla cake in the middle, on top of that is whip-cream again. When I put the last layer of chocolate cake on, it slipped from the rack, dropped on the floor. My heart sunk. NO! First was the roof didn't work, now I dropped my cake. What's wrong with me?! I really wanted to cry. I left everything on the table and walked away.
After dinner, I calmed down myself. "Let's try again." I designed the third roof, piped on wax papers, left them dry over night. This morning, I put them together. It didn't take long. Yes! I did it! My roof came out just right and fits on the cage. The next couple hours, I rushed to finish the cake (only two layers).
This was not easy project. From angle bird, "fraud" roof design, dropping cake on the floor to everything came together just so pretty, I learned so much from it. I almost gave up on it. I am very glad that I pushed myself to finish it. I am proud of myself.
Life Is Good!
Life Is Sweet & Spicy!
Sheila it's a masterpiece - Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteJust for curiosity what did you do for the base of the bird cage and how did you attach the bird cage pieces together?
Thank you. That's not hard. The base is made of fondant. I used stiff royal icing to glue all the pieces together. Needed Victor to hold for a while. Royal icing drys fast and drys hard. Perfect glue for this cage.
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