Piece of Cake

Well, not exactly. My husband got a Cricut Cake last year for his birthday (I honestly did not put him up to it- he asked for it of his own accord!), and since we haven't used it a whole lot, we thought we would pull it out and give it a shot when making a Thank You cake for Shell and her husband John, who had watched our pets when we traveled over the weekend. I picked a design from the "Just Because" Cards cart, and we were off. Our theme was watermelon, so I baked a red velvet cake with chocolate chips in the batter (to look like seeds), and frosted the cake green. So far, so good. We figured we would cut the three easy decor pieces out of gumpaste, slap 'em on top, and be good to go for afternoon delivery.

Yeah. Like that was happening.

Instead, we spent the rest of our Saturday afternoon cutting and recutting gumpaste.

Some things we learned:

1. Gumpaste needs to be pretty stiff to cut. Add more powdered sugar than you think you need.
2. Stiff gumpaste dries out quickly. And it cracks. So don't make it too stiff.
3. Intricate cuts like letters are a no-no. Maybe they work better with fondant.
4. The color printing on our old Farberware flexible cutting mats apparently comes off on gumpaste you roll out on said mats. Who knew?
5. There needs to be a pressure setting between Minimum and Low on the Cricut Cake.

We finally got the job done...for an eight o'clock delivery. All that said, it was fun to work together on a project with the husband. Next time, though, I think our theme will be circles. Or squares. Perhaps straight lines.

Seeing cute hubby in an apron makes it all worthwhile ;-)