Crazy?

So here's the question.  How crazy am I?  See I know I didn't write for about 6 months.  There is a reason for that.

                                                  This.
                        My third little girl, and if she's like her sisters,

                                 my third little bakers assistant.
She is due on September 20th.  Coming right up isn't it?  Here's the crazy part.  There's this wedding.  My husband's cousin is getting married, and, you guessed it, she wants ME to make her wedding cake.  When is the wedding?  September 25.  So I ask again...how crazy am I?

Purely Coincidental

There is a movie that came out recently, perhaps you've heard of it.  Julie & Julia?  People have been asking me if I've seen it, and besides the whole Julia Child cooking thing, I really didn't know why they thought this particular movie should have caught my attention.  I've never really known much about Julia Child and I'm a baker more than a chef, so what made everybody think I must have seen this movie.  I watched it last night.  Now I understand.  And while I assure you that all similarities between Julie and I are coincidental, the parallels are uncanny!  We are both nearly 30 with a passion for cooking and a husband who encouraged us to blog about it.  What really made me gasp was the shot of the laptop that she wrote her blog on.  It looked like an older (2002 vs 2010) version of this beauty that my sweet husband insisted on giving me to encourage me in publishing my baking fancies.

Seriously?  The same laptop?  That is just, just, well it just made me laugh.  And then it inspired me to get on here and write this post which I've been meaning to do for some time now.  This computer isn't the only new gadget that this baking/ blogging thing was the excuse...er...reason to upgrade.  There was also this beautiful new camera.  Picked specifically for its size (it fits in a pocket or my bag) 

but also its ability to take really great food shots for a point and shoot.  Because, I may as well come clean now, I've been obsessed with photographing everything that comes out of my kitchen since long before it was popular.  And of course if you have a great camera you have to have something to edit those photos with... 

because even my best shots still need cropping :)  This is going to be fun!

Surprise

I have a friend. She has been my friend for a very long time. Nearly 30 years. We will have been friends for EXACTLY 30 years on my birthday, but this isn't about my birthday. It is about her's...her surprise 30th birthday party. And what a surprise it was too! This sweet friend of mine was so involved in preparations for her sister's upcoming wedding and studying for law school that she assumed her birthday would pass unnoticed this year. We were not going to allow that of course, but it made for excellent cover, especially since she gave up this weekend nearest to her big birthday to her sister's bachelorette weekend (I baked for that too, but forgot pictures, so I'll recreate and share later) so we planned for the Saturday before her birthday. And there was no way she was going to turn 30 without a big birthday cake from me. Which is really what this post is supposed to be all about, so forgive me if I ramble on about my friend :)
 Now I happen to know that her favorite cake combination is a rich, moist chocolate cake with barely sweet cream cheese frosting (great minds think alike I must say), and I also know she has a fondness for hazelnuts.




Since I intended this to be a BIG cake with two tiers, I did chocolate on the bottom and a lovely Hazelnut Brown Butter cake with ganache for the top.

As for decorating, I let her personality and interests inspire me. She is a fashionable gal who spent a semester studying in Paris during college (we tried to study French together, but my language skills...well lets just say its a good thing she was the one in France) so I decided to start with a hat box cake....two hat boxes.

 The bottom one was inspired by limoges  jewelry boxes and piped and brushed accordingly.

The top one was quilted blue with pearls and a hand painted 30 popping out.

 Then I sculpted a ballet slipper in honor of her years as a fabulous dancer...and mine of watching her (I gave up after getting my foot stuck on the bar at age 7).


She graduated from USC so of course I included her Alma Mater on there.












 And as a tribute to her stint as an actress (I won't tell you which film because she might never speak to me again, but she was great!) I draped it with a bit of Hollywood film.


I finished it off with her current school University of San Diego where she is busy studying law.





The best part about this cake?

When she called to talk about the bridal shower for her sister and found out I was baking a cake "for a birthday this weekend" and she got jealous of the person getting the chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting because "I want a birthday cake". How many times will I get to make someone jealous of their own surprise?  Happy Birthday Jodi!