Monday, May 31, 2010

Grandmom's 92nd Birthday


My sweet grand mom (GG is short for great grandmom, which is what my nieces call her) turned 92 years young this week and the family gathered to celebrate her birthday. My Aunt and Uncle threw a BBQ and most everyone was able to make it.  I paused for a minute at one point in the afternoon and took in the familiar and comfortable site of most of our family sitting under the huge Oak tree in the back yard just hanging out and talking.  I'm hopeful we get many more chances to do that...
I made Gram a special cake- vanilla with strawberry rhubarb filling. The cake was inspired by this one 
on cake central. I had some help making this cake from a special snufalufagus who was invaluable in helping me push the fondant through the clay gun to make the "rope" that was arranged into the flower shapes.
The only problem that happened was the delivery of this cake was not so smooth... I should have used straws through the middle of the top cake to secure it in place.  I didn't do that, for some reason, and as I was exiting the turnpike the top cake flipped off... It was still edible but certainly didn't look as pretty as I wanted it too.  Lesson learned about layered cakes and transporting...

Here are some pics of the process...
The cake filled...
 Me spreading the strawberry rhubarb filling:
We experimented with a test run of some iphone video of some of the cake action.  Once I figure out how to insert it into the blog I will post...


Snuffy's Hands at work :)




 The Carnage... 
 



 On another note, my awesome brother in law gave me two rose bushes from his yard.  The roses bush pictured below is from my Grand mom. She planted it in her yard many many years ago (it is probably over 60 years old.)  It is a  Frau Karl Druschki Rose bush.  My grandmom loves flowers and it makes me so happy to have a piece of her yard in my yard...  These are the first two flowers from the plant this year... Very exciting!!!(thanks to my sister for clarifying the history of this rose bush for me...)