Tuesday, July 29, 2008

pattie cake remix

i think i may have mentioned before that my grammie (who's first name is fortuitously pattie...pattie cakes, get it?) ran a fabulous cake-decorating business out of her north hollywood home for more than 20 years. she was basically famous...she'd do party cakes for the studios, wedding cakes for just about every person in town (including some celebs like jan from the brady bunch, who lived down the street), and every single one of my birthday cakes throughout my life.

just about all of my memories of gram have to do with her decorating cakes. i'd always get to visit them for a week each summer, all by myself, and she was always working on cakes when we weren't out on some fantastic adventure. typically she'd give me some tubes and frosting and my own little cake and let me go at it, decorating my own -- though i wasn't very good. not to mention the fact that her frosting is SO DELICIOUS that i grew up literally eating bowls of it, as you can see in the picture below (circa 1986) -- i blame my sugar addiction on this habit:



anyway, when the grandparents moved to arizona a few years ago, grammie retired from the cake business (although she now teaches decorating classes for the city when she's not traveling the world). she did however make my beautiful wedding cake, which people still talk about. bottom line -- grammie is amazingly talented.





basically, the main point of this post is that i've wanted to get more into cake decorating, and for christmas grammie gave me a totally sweet decorating starter kit that sadly i have not had time to use until NOW -- this weekend i sat down and actually made a batch of frosting from scratch, baked some cupcakes and got out my kit!

first i must say that spending a saturday afternoon decorating cupcakes is really the best activity one could find. i was pretty proud that the frosting turned out just as good as her version although i was seriously grossed out by the amount of sugar in it (and crisco? YUCK. yeah, i still ate a tub of it). my final conclusion was that while i am slightly better at decorating as a 24-year-old and not an 11-year-old, i'm still definitely a beginner as you will see in the following pictures.

i made allll kinds of cupcakes.




some blue & white ones for jeff & laura's goodbye party:




some nintendo-themed ones, per the request of the birthday boy:




some other more abstract ones so i could try out the different tips:



and a bunch more that are already in my tummy. yeah, so essentially i learned i need to work on it if i ever want to open up a second-generation pattie cakes, but this was definitely a fun (and yummy) way to start out. thanks again gram!

5 comments:

Karly said...

Oh that sounds so fun. I took a cake decorating class from a pastry shop in Orem just after I graduated BYU. It was awesome! Sad to say I haven't done it since and forgot everything. You just made me want to whip out all my old stuff and play around again. But I too couldn't believe what went into making your own frosting. I am so impressed by your cup cakes! They look amazing! You'll be starting your own store in no time. :)

dana said...

wow! Your wedding cake is absolutely gorgeous. So amazing. No wonder you grammie was a successful cake lady.
I'm glad you're carrying on the legacy! Your cupcakes look fabulous and I love the color of blue you choose. Fine work! I think your grandma will be proud. Does she check your blog?

Angela and Mike said...

HOW FUN. Okay, I want to move to CA just so we can live by each other and do fun things like cupcake decorating! Your grandma is awesome, I love your wedding cake :) I'm a fan of your nintendo cupcakes. haha.

Kathryn said...

Since you are into cupcakes, you need one of these:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=112114&RN=0

This is on my wishlist very soon. And I found a cute cupcake blog if you are interested for ideas of things you can decorate.

http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/

The Mid Life Guru said...

My favorite was your red lacey looking one. Good job!!!